


The Road to Resurrection

by thedevilchicken



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Afterlife, Anal Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Backstory, Blow Jobs, Character Death Fix, Complicated Relationships, Developing Relationship, Duty, Emotional Manipulation, Geographical Inaccuracies, Helheimr | Hel (Realm), M/M, Magic, Manipulative Loki (Marvel), Masturbation, Minor Injuries, Mythology References, Pre-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Resurrection, Valhalla, Voyeurism, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 13:48:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21162659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Loki arrives in Valhalla. He has no intention of staying there, and Skurge is the one who's going to help him escape.





	The Road to Resurrection

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theae/gifts).

> If this looks familiar, it's the vastly expanded version of my [other work](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20911640) for this exchange!

Skurge has grown his hair since he came back from the dead. 

He didn't do it because he minded people staring at his tattoos because, well, frankly, he knows that's why he got them in the first place, all that time ago; it's just that at some point it started seeming easier to get it cut every couple of months instead of shaving it off every few days, even if the points stick out past his hairline. Besides, razorblades are pricey on Midgard and he's got to watch his budget. That's something he misses about the afterlife; Hel and Valhalla really don't have ATMs. 

He's grown his hair and without his armour or Hela's axe, he looks more or less like anyone else in New Asgard. He misses the old Asgard, though, and not just because he didn't have to worry about online banking or how to program a washing machine so it doesn't shrink his jeans. He works security at the only pub in town and it pays well enough but he didn't exactly grow up dreaming of throwing drunk Asgardians out of a Midgardian alehouse to make his living. Especially since it means he spends most of his time sober. 

Some of the others drink to forget the things that happened, like Hela and then Ragnarok, then Thanos. It seems to work for them, too - he sees them all laughing and joking like they did back in the halls on Asgard, and like he knows the dead do in Valhalla. Not many of the Einherjar made it to Midgard alive so here he's one of their strongest, except for the Valkyrie and maybe Thor, at least when they're not falling-down drunk. Sometimes he calls Korg and Miek from the phone behind the bar just so he doesn't have to throw him out when he's had too much again, because that never seems quite right. Then he trudges home, back to his little house on the outskirts of town, past the part where the pavement stops and the path's just well-trodden dirt. For part of the year he can ride a bike to work and back, but in winter the snow's too deep for that. It's January now, so the snow's too deep. Turns out he's been there for long enough that he remembers the names of all the months and the seasons that go with them, even if it still doesn't feel like home.

He's grown his hair and it needs cutting but right now, but he can't say he minds it. The extra bit of length it's got, that makes it look a mess when he's been out in the wind or he takes off the woolly hat that an old lady in town knitted for him when he found her missing cat, well, it just makes it easier to pull. He didn't mean to find the cat; it was hiding in Loki's house, shedding fur all over his spare cape, and he recognised its furry face from the Neighbourhood Watch app Korg has somehow got everyone in town to use on the mobile phones they've all got addicted to. He didn't mean to grow his hair, either; it's just a happy kind of coincidence that it's long enough for Loki's fingers to twist in. It's not like he could've planned it, after all. He never knows when he's going to turn up, or even if the last time was maybe the _last_ time. 

Sometimes he goes to Loki's house even though he knows he's not in it. He's like a caretaker, sort of, though he's not exactly paid for it - he makes sure no one's broken in and stolen any of the old Asgardian stuff he's dragged back from his travels, and no old ladies' cats have peed on the furniture, and when the pipes burst last winter he called a plumber to get them fixed. Loki's furnished the place with things from Asgard before Ragnarok that he's brought back from other planets and somehow he's ended up with the biggest house of all of them, maybe because he paid a team to build it with a gold ingot the size of Skurge's forearm that he brought back from who even knows where. It's not far from Skurge's house, really, just a five minute walk further out of town along the cliff, not far from where they arrived from Hel. It doesn't matter that there's no road to get there, because Loki just lands his ship in the garden. Skurge has given up trying to keep the flowerbeds looking neat since he crushed the roses last year, so he just mows the lawn from time to time, when it's not snowing. He doesn't mind mowing. It keeps him busy, and the smell of cut grass is exactly like it was where he grew up. Vanaheim and Tønsberg weren't really so different.

The thing is, though, Loki's never really there. He's usually off gallivanting through space because he hates being on Midgard and Skurge can't really blame him for that, if he's honest about it. Loki made some kind of deal with the glowy-handed wizards that he wouldn't use magic while he's on their planet and then they did something Skurge really doesn't understand that means he _can't_ use magic while he's there, but he knows he wants to. He hates not being able to, like he couldn't in Valhalla, so it makes sense that the nice new house that kind of looks like a castle in miniature is empty most of the time. Skurge thinks he'd hate that, too, if he knew any magic, but he doesn't have the knack for it. Loki tried to teach him once, probably out of boredom, but it didn't exactly go well. 

Loki's never really there but he's there now, sitting at the kitchen table as the sun rises outside. He's wearing one of Skurge's sweaters that's getting threadbare in the elbows and the bottom half of a pair of thermal pyjamas he bought online for when it gets really cold. Loki can't change his outfit in the blink of an eye like he probably does on other planets. One of Loki's suits is hanging in Skurge's bedroom cupboard. There's three ties all in very slightly different shades of green - at least Loki says they're different, and Skurge will have to take his word on that - hanging on the back of the cupboard door, and there's a drawer full of socks and belts and underwear and a pair of really nice leather gloves that Skurge wishes would fit him because Loki probably wouldn't notice if they disappeared. He's not there often enough for that, and chances are that after last night, he's never coming back again. 

Skurge knows how he got here, to this place and this time and this fucked-up situation. He'd blame Loki, but he made his own choices. He chose to put his people before himself and got himself killed because of it. He chose the magnolia paint that will probably never come off the floorboards where it dripped when he was decorating. He chose to grow his hair, or at least he chose not to shave it.

He chooses to be here. Just like he chose to leave Valhalla.

\---

He remembers the first time he saw him in the Hall of Fallen Heroes. 

Heimdall walked in, without Hofund but Skurge supposed it didn't matter if the Bifrost Sword was gone if the Bifrost was gone, too. A dozen more came after. At the back of them, alone, looking pissed off and haughty, was Odin's second son. 

Skurge knows he only ever got to Valhalla on a technicality; he died in battle, saving Asgardian lives, and that superceded all the crap he'd done for Hela. Loki, though, got there on merit, standing up to Thanos - they found that out about twenty minutes after he arrived. He'd helped that day on the Bifrost, then he'd died maybe saving his brother. 

In the Hall of Fallen Heroes, everyone has their place. Skurge remembers the day he arrived, too, wandering in through the door at the back of the group just like Loki did; there were tables stretching down the hall till faces faded out of sight in the lamplight, then there were five mirthless men sitting not far from the door at a much smaller table. It looked like it was the draughtiest place there - the candles on the table kept blowing out whenever someone opened the door and the fires were a long, long way away. There were twelve seats and nine names but it was only set for six and Skurge remembers the bitter smile he gave himself as he went to the empty space. His name was carved into the tabletop by the sixth setting, but he didn't need to see it to know he'd found his place. He sat down, with the men who'd done enough to get there but not enough to be forgiven, and he ran his fingertips over his name. 

The food and drink weren't any different to what everyone else had. In Valhalla, there's a new feast every day. The drink's good. The food's fucking fantastic. But really, for most people, the best thing's the company - there's friends and family and comrades-in-arms and they eat and drink and laugh and talk and sing into the night. The only problem Skurge had when he arrived was, well, his family had all been stonemasons on his father's side and horse trainers on his mother's, and he'd always been the odd one out with the Einherjar, even before Hela had turned up all pointy-antlered and stabby. His family hadn't died in battle, so they'd gone to Hel, and nobody in Valhalla was too happy to see him but they couldn't be completely _un_happy, so they mostly just ignored him. Nobody wanted to talk to him, not even the men at his table, so he told himself he didn't want to talk to them, either. 

That night, he hadn't spoken a word that wasn't just to himself in months. Then, Loki came to the table and he sat down at the head of it. 

"Wrong table," Skurge muttered. 

"I don't think so," Loki said. 

"Does it have your name on it?"

Loki glanced down, at the space in front of him and then at the table's other residents. "No," he replied. 

"Then I'd say it's probably not your place. You'll have a better one. Your mum and dad are... well, they're not sitting here." 

Loki paused for a moment, then he took out a knife. Skurge watched for the next five minutes while Loki carved his name into the table and blew the splinters into Skurge's plate of pork. 

"Is that better?" he asked, when he was done. Skurge just grimaced and turned back to his meal, because he knew he should've known better than to say anything. Loki didn't say much else, and Skurge kept busy pulling bits of wood out of his food.

After dinner, Skurge left his seat. Most of the others slept in the hall, passed out drunk or snoozing under cloaks and blankets because apparently the dead didn't get cricks in their necks from that sort of thing. There were endless rooms, though, spreading out from the hall like the branches of Yggdrasil, and some of the others slept in those. Some were like military barracks and whole companies who'd died together (or maybe a hundred or more years apart, who knew) took a bunk each. Some were for couples. The men at Skurge's table all had a room each, though, so Skurge had assumed the same would be true for him and wandered the corridors searching for the room that bore his name. It hadn't taken long that first night, almost like he'd known where he was going without having a clue at all, like getting to the table. By the night Loki arrived, getting to his room was second nature.

The room was small and faintly damp and not particularly inviting. There was a narrow bed by one of the dark stone walls and a table with a chair at it, a small window that whistled with the wind at night, no cupboards or shelves, and his spear stood up in the corner. He'd been surprised to see it on the racks in the field outside a few days after he'd arrived but apparently that was a thing that happened in Valhalla, too; the dead had everything they needed in the afterlife that they'd had in life, more or less. He'd found his armour that way, too, and it sat in a haphazard pile in the corner of his room in case he needed it, but his old helmet was more use for catching drips from the slightly leaky eaves than it was for what it was built for. He didn't need more clothes than the ones on his back because they all woke up fresh and clean every day, and six letters sat unopened on the table. There were a few sheets of paper and a pen sitting next to them, and three books he'd borrowed from the library, and the lamp he used when the sun set and the snow started falling outside. And that was how he was meant to spend eternity. It could've been worse, he thought, but it definitely could've been better.

He sat down on the bed. It was cold in his room but not _cold_ cold, not outside-in-the-snow cold, just enough that he needed a second blanket so he could keep his bald head out of the chilly air, and sometimes he regretted taking his boots off. He thought it probably would've been better if he'd just had someone else to share the bed with, but the door only had one name on it; apparently, the afterlife was telling him he was meant to be alone.

He lay down and bundled up and went to sleep. Then, the next day, it all started again. 

That night, Loki was there again at the table at dinner. Skurge found himself wishing he'd find somewhere else to sit because frankly, him being there like a disapproving spectre made him sort of uncomfortable; when he glanced at him over his meat and beer, Loki reminded him of someone else: they had the same black hair and pale skin, the same posh voice and snooty tone when they decided to say things, both royalty, both Odin's kids. Skurge really didn't need reminding. He did enough of that himself. 

By the time the third and fourth and fifth days had passed, Skurge started to realise he was going to need to just get used to it. It wasn't that bad, he told himself, because it wasn't like Loki was doing much more than asking a question every now and then and putting him off his food. There should've been plenty to distract himself with, because nobody else there was quiet, but he ended up glancing at him anyway, then looking away again when Loki caught him. People probably looked all the time, though. Loki was probably used to it. 

On the seventh or eighth night after Loki and Heimdall and the others arrived, arrived, the door to Skurge's room opened in the middle of the night. When he looked up, it was Loki, carrying a lamp, and Skurge squinted at him as he stood there in the doorway. He wasn't sure if he was more surprised that it was him or that anyone had come at all. 

"Prince?" he said. 

"It's cold in here," Loki replied, though that wasn't really much of a reply. Skurge guessed he really hadn't asked much of a question. "Is it always this cold in here?"

"Yeah, usually. I bet you've got a fire." 

"Yes, as a matter of fact." Loki frowned around the room. "You do know the Golden Hall gives you what you believe you deserve, don't you? I'm not sure this says anything particularly good about your state of mind." 

Skurge pulled himself up and sat back against the headboard. "It's not that bad. It's just cold." 

"And dark. And small." 

"I bet yours is twice as big." 

"About fourteen times. This is ridiculous. Apparently I think better of you than you do yourself, and I think you're very little more than a self-aware sword arm." 

"That doesn't sound much like a compliment." 

"Well, it's not, really, is it." Loki sighed and he came into the room and he nudged the door shut behind him. "Skurge, I think you might be the most miserable man in Valhalla," he said, as he sat down in the only available space that wasn't the rickety desk or just the floor - the end of the bed, by Skurge's cold, socked feet. "And no, that's not meant to be a compliment, either." 

He set the lamp down on the floor, which didn't do great things for how he looked; the light hit him from underneath and threw shadows on his face, around his eyes, and reminded Skurge of someone else. Skurge shivered, not totally sure if that was from the cold or not, but he pulled one of his blankets higher anyway. 

"Look, I know it's your family's hall and all that, but..."

"But would I mind getting to the point?" Skurge winced and Loki smiled, just for a second, like maybe he was enjoying Skurge's discomfort. "Of course. I didn't just come here to have a casual conversation." He paused, probably for dramatic effect. "You know, I don't think you belong here." 

Skurge snorted. "You're not the first one who's said that," he replied. 

"That's not what I mean."

"Then I don't know what you mean." 

"I mean, I have no intention of staying here," Loki said. "While you're attempting to sleep in this ridiculous room, I want you to ask yourself one question: would you rather be here or would you rather be living?" Then he patted Skurge's thigh and he picked up the lamp, and he left the room again. 

When he was gone, Skurge lay down in the dark and pulled the blanket back up over his head. As he tried to sleep, he couldn't help it: he did exactly what Loki had asked him to. He asked himself if he'd rather stay in the Golden Hall where the warriors went when they died or if he'd rather be alive, knowing he'd probably never go back there again. 

Frankly, he had no idea. 

\---

The afterlife is a lot like actual life, Skurge had found, except without injuries or hunger or the need to pee, or much of anything to do. That doesn't matter very much if you've got people to share it with, of course, but Skurge really hadn't. 

In the day, the people in Valhalla fight and ride horses and eat golden apples off the trees that regrow overnight - sometimes, when he got up early enough, he watched them grow. Some of them read. Some of them write, so there's actually more books in Valhalla than there ever were on Asgard. That's also the only way they ever talk to Hel, really - they've got some kind of inter-afterlife loan service, and sometimes letters come like that, too. Skurge had a few, addressed to his old name from before he decided he was better off called Skurge, in his mother's handwriting. He never opened them. They're probably still sitting on the table or tucked under the mattress in the room he'll never see again, because he's never going back to Valhalla.

The thing Skurge really doesn't get is why the afterlife is the way it is. The ones who die in battle go to Valhalla and the rest - most of them, really - shuffle off to Hel, and you can't get between one and the other and that seems like a kind of crappy arrangement. You can send messages, but that's it. And he hadn't been able to finish writing a single letter since he'd arrived, so the postal system was of absolutely no use to him at all. 

Most of them fight and ride horses and eat apples and enjoy their life after death with friends and family. Skurge didn't. No one would fight him and he didn't feel much like riding, and he was very, very sick of Idun's fucking golden apples. He spent a lot of time walking instead, in the fields and hills around the hall, though he had to admit he'd never been much of a fan of that before. He wasn't really then, either - it was just a convenient way to escape the places everyone else was for a few hours, and being dead had the unexpected advantage that he never got blisters. 

The day after Loki came to his room, Skurge went for a walk like he often did. He left the hall and he skirted around the edge of the field outside where they did all their sparring and he followed the path through the woods to the bottom of the hill that stretched up above. He supposed it was more of a mountain, really, tall and jagged and capped with snow at the peak that got lower and lower throughout the day, with a river rushing down it that snaked through the field and into a freezing lake where some of the others went swimming. And sometimes he thought about going higher, and higher, to find the faces to put to the names that were carved by the empty seats on his table. So far, he'd resisted the urge.

He knew to turn right at the fork in the path and go up into the foothills because the left-hand path led down to the clearing where Odin's horses lived. He could see it from the hill the higher he climbed - a bunch of winged white horses were playing and eating and Sleipnir, Odin's great grey eight-legged steed, was lying there asleep. He raised his head every now and then as some of the younger horses got too close and sent them skittering away again. Skurge liked to think he did it on purpose, like a grumpy old grandfather. 

Skurge knew he wasn't meant to go down there. There aren't many places in or around Valhalla that are completely off limits, just Sleipnir's clearing and the kings' rooms, but it's not like anyone checks - he'd been down there before that day and when he came back down the hill he left the path and he cut through the trees and he leaned at the rough fence at the edge of the clearing that was completely pointless, given all the horses had wings. A couple of the skittish younger ones ran away, except not really - Skurge bit into an apple he produced from his pocket and they came back quickly. He produced another couple of apples and he fed one to each, and they let him pat them on the nose. Sleipnir looked up briefly; Skurge tossed him an apple, too, and he polished it off in one bite with an appreciative rumble before he went back off to snoring sleep. Skurge supposed if he were that old, he'd want to sleep, too.

He sat himself down on the fence, through the space between the crossbeams, his arms on the top to keep himself steady. Most of the seventeen winged horses ignored him, which was fine by him, no worse than back at the hall. Some of them came over and nudged him with their noses to see if he had more apples for them, though it wasn't like they were lacking food. Sometimes he'd climb in and sit in the grass with his back up against the fencepost and the foals would come over to jump around him and every time they turned unexpectedly they'd slap him in the face with a wing or a tail, but he really didn't mind. Sometimes they fell asleep with their heads on him till he couldn't feel his legs and it started to get dark and they all flew away to the edges of Valhalla where they slept in the shade of a seedling of Yggdrasil, or at least that was what the stories said. There weren't any Valkyries to ride them anymore, and if they made it to Hel there was no Bifrost to take them from there back to Asgard. There was no Asgard even, not anymore. 

It started to get dark and the leaves were still shedding from the trees as the snow started to fall. He'd seen it happen every day; all the seasons passed them by quickly, spring to winter, as time passed sunrise to sunset. So he gave the two foals one last pat, cut his last apple in two and threw each of them a half, and then left and headed back toward the hall. 

When he went inside, there was Loki at the head of the table. He sat down and ran his fingertips over his own name in the wood just like he always did, then he picked up a cup of beer. He wondered where Loki's name really was - by Odin and Frigga? the Warriors Three? - but Loki clearly didn't give it much thought. He just sat there, straight-backed and pale and imperious, and every time Skurge glanced up, he was looking at him. He hated that he couldn't stop. It made his cheeks feel hot. He could feel Loki's gaze lingering, and the weight of the question he still hadn't answered. 

That night, after dinner, his bedroom door opened again. Loki didn't even stay as long as he had the last time; all he did was shake a big bearskin blanket out over him and then leave again, and Skurge had his first warm night's sleep since he'd got to Valhalla.

It didn't do much to ease his confusion. He'd never expected him to be kind.

\---

Some of Valhalla's residents have big copper tubs in their rooms that fill up with hot water when they want to take a bath. Some of them have warm showers that drain away to who knows where. Skurge tended to wake up in the morning to a bowl of tepid water on the table across the room; sometimes he used that and sometimes he went outside to wash in the rocky stream that ran by the back of the hall. The next morning, he left the bowl untouched and went outside. At least the stream was meant to be cold.

All the other brave souls who liked a splash of icy water to help wake them up in the morning used the river or the lake in the field at the front of the hall, not the stream. It was relatively shallow, and filled with pebbles worn flat and smooth by the running water, and it was somehow always unoccupied apart from him, so he preferred it to the other places. It wasn't like he minded taking off his clothes in front of other people - he'd been a soldier for a long time, after all, and he'd never been too modest to begin with. He just preferred choosing to be on his own rather than having it forced on him. The control he had was an illusion and he knew it, but it made him feel a bit better. 

He took off his clothes and dropped them on the grassy bank, and he stepped into the water. It was cold but it wasn't like he could die from it even if he sat there all day till it started to snow, given he was already dead, and he found it sort of bracing. He liked the way the water rushed around his thighs as he knelt on the pebbles and how the sun shone on his skin so he was sort of warm and cold at the same time. And there was no one else there, there never was, so once he'd splashed himself with water he didn't feel shy about wrapping one hand around his cock. No one was ever there so he didn't feel shy about pressing the tips of his fingers, chilled by the stream, between his cheeks to the heat of his hole. He made himself shiver. A few minutes later, he made himself come. Whatever Loki had said the other night about what Skurge thought he deserved, he at least thought he deserved that. 

He didn't hear anyone approaching, maybe just because no one ever had before. So, when someone coughed nearby, he almost jumped out of his skin. He stumbled to his feet and turned around, dripping wet and still very naked, and there was Loki. 

"How long have you been there?" Skurge asked. 

"Oh, not very long," Loki replied. He looked him up and down, really obviously, and a smile flashed across his face just for an instant before vanishing again. He raised one brow. He tossed him his towel, and Skurge wondered if he should use it to cover himself up. "Not long. But long enough." 

As Skurge basically wished the stream would just rise up and wash him out to sea, Loki turned and strode away from him. Skurge had no idea what he'd even come there for, if not for him, and he had no idea what to make of that. All it did was put ideas in his head, and he didn't need the help.

The next morning, in the stream again, Skurge still kept his back to the hall. As he stroked himself, he listened; all he could hear was the water, and the breeze in the trees, and the occasional bird, and faint sounds from the more popular river. But as he rubbed one fingertip between his cheeks, as he teased his hole, he found himself almost hoping Loki was there - maybe he should've been more ashamed of that, but it wasn't like he was doing anything wrong. Fantasy wasn't reality, Loki wasn't Hela, and attraction didn't need to make sense. But when he was done, and he turned around, Loki wasn't watching. 

He did it again the next day, kneeling there in the stream, knees spread wide enough that the chilly water reached his balls. The chill was nice, though, or at least it got that way after a while. He cupped them in one hand, squeezed almost too hard, and stroked himself. He usually didn't have much of anything in his head when he did that - he did it because it felt good, not because he'd got specific fantasies - but the truth was his mind had started to wander. 

He was thinking about Loki. Specifically, he was thinking about Loki watching him. He was thinking about Loki in all his black leather sitting cross-legged on the bank of the stream, watching him intently. He imagined his gaze moving all over him, from the tattoos at his scalp and over his collarbones and his chest, down the trail of hair over his abdomen that was wet from the stream. He imagined Loki's gaze on his hands, watching him ease back his foreskin to expose the flushed head of his cock. He couldn't make himself imagine Loki enjoying it - in his head, Loki just looked intrigued, like Skurge was some kind of science project, but that didn't make it any less hot. But when he came, he imagined his come splashing one of Loki's knees. He groaned as he imagined licking the leather clean. And when he opened his eyes, Loki definitely wasn't there. 

Night by night, it started getting harder to face him at dinner. Sometimes he looked up and the expression on Loki's face said he knew what he was thinking, and what he'd been doing, but he didn't say a word about it. Skurge just looked back down at his plate and drank another mouthful of beer. 

Six days passed like that, maybe seven, not that days or the counting of them really mattered all that much now given where he was in the universe. The next morning, he washed in his room over the bowl of lukewarm water instead of going out to the stream. That night, he read a book in his room instead of going to the hall for dinner - he'd never been much of a reader before, but it had been growing on him over the months since he'd arrived. It wasn't like he needed to eat, so he told himself it wasn't bad, sitting on his bed with the bearskin blanket wrapped around his shoulders. It was easier than facing Loki, and the fact he probably only thought of him that way because he'd been the only one who'd shown any interest. It could have been anyone, he told himself. It just happened to be the king's son.

He did the same the next day, annoyed with himself that he was avoiding him and vaguely wondering if he was going to spend the rest of forever trying to act like Loki of Asgard didn't exist. He spent the whole day up at Sleipnir's clearing, sitting under a tree while it rained and the foals shook water off their wings at him, and when the sun shone and rainbows sprang up in the sky, he told them stories about the Bifrost and all the places he'd been to thanks to it. Maybe they couldn't understand him, and he'd felt a bit of an idiot the first few times he'd talked to them, but it made him feel better. Slightly. It reminded him of where he'd grown up. 

He skipped dinner again. He washed in his room again the next morning. Then he went out into the field with his spear and found a space where he'd be out of the way and he practiced some of the old exercises they'd been taught years ago in training. He'd been a warrior for Asgard since his seventeenth birthday, and the movements were bordering on instinct. He did it the traditional way, stripped to the waist and showing off the tattoos that started at his collarbones and swept back over his shoulders and then down the length of his back, ending in on converged point by the cleft of his arse. But then he turned sharply and when he brought the spear down, its wooden shaft struck another one. 

"You know, most people wouldn't consider it a challenge if there's no one fighting back," Loki said, almost pleasantly, as he whipped his spear aside and stepped away. He had his arms spread wide and the spear's long shaft tucked in neatly behind his back. Skurge wished he hadn't come there.

"Most people don't want to fight me," Skurge replied. He stabbed the tip of his spear into the ground and he left it there, the shaft of it resting against his bare shoulder for support. 

"Are you going to tell me that's because they're scared of you?" Loki asked, and Skurge snorted. 

"No. I'm going to tell you that's because they don't want to spar with traitors." 

"Well, neither do I." 

Loki pushed the tip of his spear into the ground just like Skurge had done and for a moment he thought that was it, it was over before it had really begun, Loki had finally realised his foolish mistake and remembered what Skurge had done back on Asgard - Hela had killed so many people just for standing up to her, and all he'd done was stand by and watch. But, instead of walking away, Loki just stripped off his leather jacket and stripped off the tight black undershirt he was wearing under it. Skurge somehow hadn't realised what Loki would look like underneath; he hadn't given it a lot of thought but he'd've imagined lean and pale and sort of lanky, and fine, he was pale and he was lean, but he was muscular with it. Skurge wondered if maybe he'd got the wrong idea by seeing him standing next to Thor. 

Loki raked his hair back from his face with both hands, making the muscles in his arms stand out, then he picked his spear back up. 

"So..." he said, turning the spear in the air in a long, languid arc. "Are we fighting?"

Skurge thought about saying no. It might have been for the best, really, even if neither of them could get particularly hurt given they were already dead, but he'd never really backed down from a fight before... except that time with Hela, when he'd known for a fact that he'd lose. He hefted his spear. Loki looked pleased. Then they fought. 

Frankly, some of the things they both did would have broken bones under any normal circumstances. Some of the things they did would have definitely broken their spears. Loki was good. He was really, really good, and somehow Skurge hadn't expected that, maybe because they all knew Thor was the warrior in the family. Skurge had had experience, though - he'd been fighting with the Einherjar for more than a thousand years, maybe he didn't make it look easy the way Loki did, but he was a match for him. 

Still, in the end, Loki got him. He knocked him down and held the spear's tip to Skurge's neck and he yielded - once upon a time he might've been ashamed to lose, especially in front of other people, but he'd been beaten by a prince and no one cared anyway. But when Loki reached down to clasp his wrist and help him up, he pulled just a bit too hard. Skurge stumbled into him, bare chest to bare chest, and Loki used both hands to steady him by his upper arms. Neither of them stepped away. His face was so close, almost close enough that Skurge's eyes wouldn't focus on him, and all he could think about was Loki's hands on his arms and his mouth was right there and he could've kissed him, probably, pressed his mouth to his and got his fingers into Loki's slightly fight-messy hair and even if Loki would've knocked him on his arse right after, it wasn't like anyone could've thought less of him than they already did. It might even have been worth it, he thought, with no idea where the fuck that thought had come from. He'd been so careful not to think about him like that, because somehow imagining him just watching seemed different, but the damn floodgates had apparently opened. 

He coughed. He stepped back. He walked away to find his shirt but accidentally stooped to pick up Loki's and dropped it like it burned him as he imagined himself pulling it on, wearing Loki's clothes, the fabric pulled almost too tight over his chest and arms. He grabbed his own instead, pushing away the thought of his own bigger frame in Loki's tight-fitting undershirt and Loki in his shirt instead. Then he scooped up his spear and mumbled, "Good fight," and he walked away so fast it was the next best thing to running. Loki didn't follow. He didn't expect him to. He wasn't sure what he would've done if he had. 

in the morning, he was on his way to the stream for the first time in days when he saw someone else was already there. It was Loki, he was sure of that even from some way away, calf-deep in the shallow water, naked, with his back turned. That time, Skurge really did just run the fuck away; there were things he absolutely wasn't meant to see, and one of Odin's sons without his clothes was high up on the list. 

He spent the day climbing up the mountain and the night walking back to the hall through the snow. He'd got lost once and caught himself wondering if he was going to freeze to death before it dawned on him that he'd already died and besides that, he knew some of the other ones who'd made it to Valhalla but felt like they didn't belong were living up there, somewhere, in the snow. That didn't mean it wasn't cold, though, and when he got back to the hall, his hands and feet were nearly numb and so was most of his face. The feast was over by then but there were still a few people at the tables, but once they'd seen who it was who'd just let in a gust of cold, snowy night air, they looked away again. Except for Loki, that was, who was sitting by the fire with his mother. Loki looked at him across the room while he was still talking to her and after one frozen moment, Skurge just hurried away. He'd been hoping to warm up by a fire, but he wasn't fool enough to go sit down by Loki and Frigga. He went to his room instead, stripped off his snow-damp clothes and curled into a shivering ball underneath his blankets with both hands tucked in under his arms. 

Not long after, the door opened; Skurge didn't need to poke his head up past the blanket to have a good idea who it was, because it wasn't like he had a long line of nighttime visitors, so he just stayed where he was. He could hear, though, fingers fumbling with fabric, fabric hitting stone, and then the blanket was pulled back just long enough for someone - Loki - to nudge Skurge onto his side on the narrow bed and settle there behind him. Loki still felt warm from the fire and his skin was really obviously bare and Skurge frowned to himself as he lay there with the entire length of the front of Loki's body pressed up to the back of his. He could feel Loki's breath against his neck, his chest against his back, one arm around his waist... He had his palm pressed flat over Skurge's sternum and his fingers splayed wide and it really didn't take him long to warm up. It took him longer to relax, but one he did he was asleep in moments. Loki never said a word. 

In the morning, he was alone again, and there was no sign he'd ever not been alone. He wasn't sure why Loki was showing any kind of interest in him but whatever he was doing really couldn't mean anything good. Except he'd changed since Hela, hadn't he? Skurge, that was, though if he had then maybe Loki had, too. They'd both risked their lives to save other people that day on the bridge, except Skurge had died and Loki hadn't. So maybe Loki was just luckier, or more pragmatic, but also maybe he'd changed. After all, he hadn't faked his death this time... But it was no good because as he lay there in the morning, as much as he would've liked to've believed he just liked him, he was absolutely sure that wasn't it. 

So, he avoided Loki. He took apples to the horses. He walked. He avoided the field where some of the others were sparring, and he avoided the lake where some of the others were swimming, and he spent the afternoon and night writing a letter to his parents that he knew he'd never send. He'd been trying to decide what he'd want tell them ever since they'd died, but now he was dead and could actually send the letter, he hadn't got the first clue what to say. In the end, he was just telling them he'd maybe made a friend, but he knew he and Loki weren't friends. He just didn't understand what he wanted from him yet. At least with Hela, it'd been clear right from the start.

He missed dinner again that night and sometime after, when the voices were starting to die down and he was humming along with a song someone was singing that he'd heard a lot while he was young, his door opened. It was Loki. He was carrying a plate and he passed it to him. Skurge took it before he realised what he was doing and just frowned at it while Loki put a mug of beer down on the chair he dragged over to use like a table by the bed. He didn't explain why he was there, a prince bringing dinner to a traitor or whatever the fuck he thought Skurge was if he wasn't that. He just paused for a moment, looking around the room, and then tapped two fingers against the letter Skurge had left on the table. 

"Am I your _friend_, Skurge?" Loki asked. 

"No." Skurge cringed. "I mean, no one was meant to read that. You weren't meant to read that. I don't write letters." He cringed harder, till his teeth were bared and he felt his face get hot. "I mean, I write letters, obviously, but I don't send them. I didn't mean I thought-- 

"Are your parents dead?" 

Skurge took a breath. He nodded, once, sharply, and said, "Yeah. They're dead." 

"So are mine. Was it recent? Were they on Asgard when...?" He gestured vaguely, and cringing gave way to wincing - it was a subtle difference, maybe, but he felt it. The letter was embarrassing but what had happened on Asgard, well, there was only one part of that that he wasn't ashamed of. 

"No," he said. "They died when I was little." 

"Were they good people?"

Skurge frowned. He hated not knowing where all of this was going, feeling like there was something obvious he was missing, so he just said, "I think so." 

Loki picked the mug of beer back up. "And you miss them?"

"Well, yeah." 

"Then send the letter." 

"But what I said about--"

Loki held up one forefinger and Skurge stopped mid-sentence. Loki took a sip of the beer then set it back down by the bed. He raised his brows. 

"Send the letter, Skurge," he said, and the way Loki looked at him, and the way Loki sounded, it almost made him shiver, except maybe that was the cold. Then Loki turned and left the room and Skurge lifted the beer and all he could think about as he drank was that Loki's mouth had just been there, too. 

\---

In the morning, he sent the letter. 

He realised he'd probably regret it, but he sealed it and slipped it into the box marked _Hel_ and then he went outside to the stream to wash. 

He faced the hall as he knelt in the water and stroked himself, just so he'd know if anyone came in his direction. The only one who ever had was Loki, though, and he knew he was half hoping he'd see him, but had no idea what he'd do if he did. He found out, though, when a figure in black rounded the corner of the hall and started walking toward him over the grass. All he did was stop what he was doing and kneel there, his hands on his thighs, his cock jutting up hard between them. As Loki got closer, he started wondering if he should cover up, and he swallowed and dug his fingers into his thighs. 

Loki stepped up to the bank of the stream, looking down at him curiously. Sitting there, naked and hard in the middle of the shallow stream while Loki stood over him, fully dressed, Skurge felt sort of ridiculous, but then Loki sat down. He crossed his legs and looked at him, let his gaze wander over him almost casually, and when it flicked up quickly from his cock up to his face, Skurge could feel himself blushing. He'd've said he hated it but considering how hard his cock was at that precise moment, he was fairly sure he'd've been lying. He liked the way Loki looked at him.

"You didn't have to stop on my account," Loki said. There was a hint of a smile at his lips and he ran his hands over his hips and over his leather trousers to his knees. And maybe Skurge was confused, and he should've just stopped and got up and walked away, but he'd never been known for making safe or sensible decisions. So he slipped one hand back down between his thighs and wrapped his fingers around his erection. He stroked himself, slowly, pinching his foreskin up over the tip and making himself shiver as Loki watched him. Then he eased his foreskin back, exposing the flushed head to the chilly air and Loki's gaze besides that; he ran his free hand down into the water then rubbed one cold fingertip against the slit there in the tip. He groaned out loud before he could stop himself. Loki, for his part, looked quietly pleased. 

Skurge ran his hand down to squeeze his balls as he stroked himself, and Loki's gaze followed. He rubbed the skin behind them, with two fingers, firmly, and Loki gripped a little harder at his own knees. Then Skurge ran his hand back behind himself, feeling himself blush hotly. But he'd only just got his fingers pressed up to his hole when he came, unexpectedly, jerking, cursing. It was like he'd imagined, sort of, except it turned out he had no stamina and his come didn't quite get on Loki's clothes. But it was probably for the best that hadn't happened. He didn't know how Loki would've reacted, for a start.

Loki rose slowly, but Skurge didn't dare actually watch him do it. He hung his head as he caught his breath but he could see Loki's boots; he saw them come closer over the grass, then step into the stream and come even closer, and then he dropped into a crouch in front of him. He tilted up Skurge's chin with the pads of two fingers. Skurge looked at him. He clenched his jaw. Loki smiled. 

"Don't avoid me, Skurge," Loki said. He pinched Skurge's chin, hard, between his thumb and forefinger. "I'm not an idiot. I know that's what you're doing." He leaned a fraction closer. "_Don't_." Then he stood and he splashed away the way he'd come and Skurge took a shaky breath as he watched him go. When he was out of sight again, he got up and dried off and got dressed and wondered how he'd managed to fuck up so spectacularly. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been so messed up over sex. Mostly just sex, or at least wanting to. He wondered if on some level he'd wanted to do it with Hela, too. Maybe if she'd succeeded... fuck, that was something he didn't want to think about.

He went to dinner that night and took his seat at the table where his name was. Loki sat down to his right, at the head of the table. When Skurge glanced at him, he didn't think he imagined it as Loki's mouth quirked briefly in a satisfied smile. 

"Tell me about yourself," Loki said, as he raised his cup and leaned on the table. 

Skurge shifted on his seat. He remembered Hela asking him something like that, and how she'd reacted, so he just told him, "There's not much to tell." 

"There must be something. Where are you from?"

Skurge shifted again. He toyed with his beer. "Vanaheim," he said, and glanced at Loki again. Loki raised his brows. 

"You're a Vanr?" 

"No. No, I was just born there." 

"And you grew up there?"

"Yeah." 

"With your parents who died when you were small?"

"Yeah." 

"Tell me about them." 

"What do you want me to say?"

"What did they do for a living?"

Skurge shrugged. "My dad was a stonemason." 

"And your mother?"

"She didn't work." 

"Is stonemasonry well-paid?"

"It can be." 

"So, what was she like?"

"She..." Skurge took another sip of his beer. He felt rattled, like he was being interrogated and he had no idea why, but it wasn't like he could just tell royalty _screw you, that's private_. Or he could have, but it would've felt strange. "Well, she wasn't much of a thinker," he said, in the end. "But she was kind. And pretty. And my dad, he was the clever one. Everyone said he could've done anything." 

Loki leaned on the table on his elbows. "What I'm hearing is, _son of a beautiful idiot and an intelligent man who settled for mediocrity_."

Skurge screwed his face up. "Something like that." 

"_Exactly_ like that?"

"Yeah." 

"And when they died?"

"I went to live with my grandparents." 

"From whose side?"

"My mum's." 

"What did they do for a living?"

"They raised horses." 

Loki raised his brows. "On Vanaheim. They raised horses _on Vanaheim_."

"Yeah." 

Skurge didn't elaborate and Loki didn't ask any more about it, and Skurge might not be as clever as his dad was but he knew Loki didn't need to ask. There was only one sort of horse they ever raised on Vanaheim, and the last of them were spending their days in a field not too far from the Hall of Fallen Heroes. They had wings, and there were no Valkyries left to ride them. 

They spent the rest of the meal in silence, listening to songs and stories all around them, and as soon as he was done eating Skurge mumbled his excuses and went back to his room. The only problem was he could hear footsteps following him and he meant to turn and look, or he meant to speed up and run, but he didn't do either and the footsteps caught him up as he opened the door with his name on it. 

Loki pushed him inside, kicked the door shut behind them, then pushed him up against it with his hands against Skurge's shoulders. Then he went down on his knees in front of him, in one weirdly smooth motion that made Skurge press back against the door, and Loki raised his hands to the laces at the front of Skurge's trousers. Skurge's eyes went wide. 

"Wait!" he said. 

Loki said back on his heels. He narrowed his eyes as he looked up at him. "_Wait_?" 

"I don't--"

"If you're going to tell me you don't have sex with men, let's just say that after this morning, I don't believe you." 

"No, I--"

"Oh, Skurge, don't tell me you have Vanaheim morals about sex. It doesn't always have to _mean_ something." 

"No, it's not that. It's just--"

"Are you more interested in being watched than being touched?"

"No! No, it's not that, either." 

"Then what, don't you find me attractive?"

"I mean, you're not my usual type, but..." 

Loki rocked back up to his feet. He put his hands on his hips. "So, what exactly is your type?" he asked, coldly. 

"Just...more like me?"

"And what's wrong with _me_?"

"Nothing! I just like...shorter hair?" Skurge gestured at him vaguely, no clue why he was saying what he was saying. "Broader shoulders. Thicker?"

Loki's face turned hard. "So my brother, then." 

"No, I..." Skurge sighed. He walked away and sat down heavily on the edge of his bed. "I'm fucking this up, yeah?"

The expression on Loki's face said he was. Then Loki said, "Yes, you absolutely are," and as he stalked straight out of the room, Skurge dropped his head into his hands. 

Really, he just didn't think he was meant to be fucking around with royalty. Apparently, fucking up with royalty was a different matter altogether. 

\---

He wouldn't say what he did for the next couple of days was avoiding him. Maybe he didn't go to the stream in the morning, but it wasn't like he always did that. He spent his days dicking about in the clearing with the horses, but that wasn't anything different, either. And, in the evening, he went to dinner and sat in his usual seat and rubbed the place his name was on the table and couldn't help but notice that Loki wasn't there. He wondered if he'd gone to his proper place, or maybe he just didn't feel much like seeing Skurge's idiot face who'd accidentally more or less told him he wanted to bone his big brother. If it'd been true, that would've been one thing, but he couldn't say he did.

The first night, afterwards, he almost hoped Loki would wander into his room in the middle of the night and somehow he could make up for being an idiot the night before. The second night, he still hoped, but the third... he'd all but given up. But the fourth, expecting nothing, he heard the door open. He felt the blankets getting pulled back and cold air on his skin and then the mattress shifted as someone joined him on it. He didn't argue as warm fingers unlaced his trousers and pulled them down around his knees. He didn't move as a hand wrapped around his cock and stroked, slowly, firmly, base to tip, till he was hard. When he felt someone's - Loki's, obviously Loki's - mouth suck just a little underneath the head, when he took him in deep, he groaned out loud. He couldn't help himself. He was just so damn relieved he hadn't fucked up irrevocably, even if he'd definitely fucked up.

"Are you going to tell me to wait this time?" Loki asked, and Skurge shook his head against the pillow before he realised there was no way Loki could see that. 

"No," he croaked, sounding slightly desperate about it, but it wasn't really the time to care about that. 

As he sucked him, Loki parted Skurge's legs as far as they could go while his trousers were still tangled around them. He felt the back of Loki's hand brush his balls, felt his fingers move back, felt him rub there behind them and then slip back a little further. One of Loki's fingertips traced the rim of his hole and made him clench his fists in the blankets. Then Loki licked another fingertip and he used that one instead and somehow the tiny amount of moisture just increased the friction. Skurge shifted against the sheets. He planted his heels against the bed and he tried really damn hard not to push up against Loki's mouth except he did, he couldn't help it, and the sound Loki made when the tip of Skurge's cock hit the back of his throat was completely fucking obscene. 

Loki moved. He pressed Skurge's hips firmly to the bed with both hands and he sucked him, as deep as he could, the tip of his cock pushing into his throat with every bob of his head. He took him in again, deep, sucking, swallowing, and Skurge groaned again, pushing up, straining against Loki's hands till the heels of them digging in to keep him still almost hurt. He teased him with his tongue, a swirl, a tickle against the slit, and Skurge's orgasm hit him like a fucking lightning bolt. He just suspected he'd better not share that simile with Loki, all things considered. 

He came in Loki's mouth and he felt Loki swallow as his cock twitched and fuck, that was hot, someone who could've maybe been a king one day sucking him off in the dark like maybe he was someone who deserved that. He would've liked to have kissed him, he realised, and probably wouldn't've cared if he'd tasted like him. But Loki left the bed, mercifully, before Skurge could do anything stupid. He opened the door and looked back for a moment as Skurge lay there, bare from mid-chest where Loki had shoved his shirt up down to his knees where his trousers were. He looked at him, hotly, and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. It almost looked like there was something he wanted to say, like it was right on the tip of his tongue just like Skurge wanted to say something, something stupid like _thank you_ or _you're amazing_ or _do you want to stay the night?_ But then Loki walked away, nudging the door closed behind him, and Skurge thought maybe it was for the best that neither of them had said anything after all. Especially him. Because sure, he didn't exactly have the not-outside-wedlock Vanaheim morals about sex that Loki had kind of accused him of, but he knew himself well enough to know he was getting really over-invested. Probably just because everyone else still ignored him, and maybe he was some kind of secret masochist. So he rearranged his clothes, pulled up the blankets and went to sleep. 

It seemed best to put it out of his mind, or try to. He maybe even managed it. Maybe. Until the following day, at least, when he rounded the corner of the hall to head out to the stream and he bumped into Loki coming back the other way. 

"You're late," Loki said, and Skurge bit back the urge to ask if they'd had an appointment. They hadn't, but maybe they kind of had. 

"I'm sorry?" he said instead. "I slept in. I was kind of worn out." 

An amused look flitted over Loki's face, gone almost before Skurge was sure he'd seen it. He was fairly sure they were both thinking the same thing, though - that Loki was the one who'd worn him out. 

"Where do you go during the day?" Loki asked instead, completely changing the subject. "Everyone else stays close to the hall."

"Do you want me to show you?" Skurge replied. "It's probably easier to show you." 

Loki shrugged. "Why not," he said. "I don't have plans." 

So Skurge abandoned the idea of washing - it wasn't like he didn't wake up spotlessly clean every day anyway, just like everyone else in Valhalla - and he abandoned his towel by the corner of the hall. He led him away, up the path that led over the wooden bridge across the river and up toward the foothills as the spring leaves on the trees were starting to unfurl though they'd be gone again by the early evening autumn. When he glanced at him every now and then, he couldn't say Loki looked ecstatic about the walk - Skurge was keeping a steady pace and it was only a few miles, but he supposed he hadn't really warned him. They didn't really speak, which made for a strange couple of hours, but then Skurge led him off the path and down the hill and when they got where they were going, Loki said, "Oh, I see." He raised his brows and crossed his arms. "We're not meant to be here. Did you miss my father's memo? It was specific."

"Well, you can leave if you like," Skurge said, then he ducked under the fence into the field. "You could tell your dad."

"Or I can follow you?"

Skurge shrugged. "If you want. Or the path's back that way." 

As the two foals cantered toward him like usual, Loki ducked into the field. The foals shied, and Skurge gave them both a reassuring pat between the ears. 

"That's Loki," he told them, feeling strange saying his name out loud around him, then he waved Loki over. "Slowly," he told him, and Loki actually paid attention - maybe they couldn't die, given they weren't exactly full of life to begin with, but that didn't mean it wouldn't be kind of uncomfortable to be trampled by immortal horses. One of them stepped forward and butted Loki's shoulder with her nose. The other snuffled at his chest and Skurge produced an apple that he handed to him to give to them; in no time at all, they were almost as easy with him as they were with Skurge, not that he'd have wanted to leave them alone. 

"Do you ride them?" Loki asked, as the horses wandered away, and he and Skurge leaned back against the utterly pointless fence. 

"Well, no. Only Odin and the Valkyries are allowed to do that." 

"Yes. And you're not meant to be here, but here you are." 

Skurge scrunched up his face. "Yeah, but that's different." 

"I don't see how."

Loki moved. He stepped in front of him and he rested one foot up on the lowest bar of the fence just to Skurge's side, close enough that his knee brushed Skurge's hip. 

"I can think of several other things you aren't meant to do," Loki said. He brought his hands up to the fence's top bar at either side of Skurge's elbows. "You're not meant to masturbate in front of your prince, Skurge, but you've done it several times. Aren't you ashamed of yourself?"

Skurge grimaced. He nodded. "Yeah," he admitted. "Yeah, I should know better. I _do_ know better." He rubbed his mouth with his fingertips, then with the back of his hand. "Okay, yeah, I'm ashamed of myself." 

"Don't be," Loki said. Then he leaned in, one hand to the nape of Skurge's neck. Loki pressed his mouth to his, slowly and softly but still sort of determined, then he pulled back again. "Don't be ashamed, Skurge. Everyone breaks the rules sometimes. And I enjoy watching you. Frankly, I'd enjoy doing a lot more than that." He pushed away from the fence and took a step back, then he turned then ducked away under the fence and back out of the clearing. "Come to my room tonight," he called back over his shoulder as he made his way toward the path. "After dinner." And he didn't wait for a response before he walked away, but Skurge understood that; he didn't expect to hear anything but _yes_, and even if Skurge knew _no_ was the safe choice, he also knew he'd go. There was no point lying to himself about that. He wasn't even sure if he cared what Loki wanted.

He spent the day with the horses, watching the leaves on the trees start to shed as the season changed again, and then he left as the snow started falling. It was thick in the air and on the ground when he got back and it was late enough into the night that Loki wasn't in the hall, so he wandered past it, wondering what he should do - it made sense to go back to his own room and dry off and try to warm up, except warming up might take him all night, and before he knew he'd made a decision he found himself knocking on the door marked _Loki Odinson_. He felt nervous, like an idiot. He wasn't sure why. 

"Come in," Loki called, so Skurge opened the door and let it swing in. He frowned. The room was _enormous_, and Loki was standing there next to the bed, barefoot and bare-chested in a pair of silky trousers slung so low they seemed to be defying gravity; Skurge would've said they were held up with magic, if he hadn't known magic didn't work in Valhalla. Skurge turned around to close the door behind him just so he could take a breath and steady himself before he looked at him again. 

"You're dripping," Loki said. 

"It's snowing," Skurge replied. 

"It always snows at night. You weren't expecting it?"

"No, I was. Yes, I was." 

"So you thought you'd come here and drip." 

Skurge frowned harder. "Yes?" he said, because he had absolutely no idea what the right answer might be otherwise. Talking to Loki was like a puzzle or a test or a mixture of both.

Loki came closer. He got one bare foot on a few stray drops of ice-cold water and looked completely disgusted by it before he put his hands on Skurge's soaked shirt. "You're freezing," he said, and started untucking the wet shirt from Skurge's trousers. Skurge let him because he wasn't sure what else to do; he lifted his arms when Loki prompted him to, and when Loki dropped into a crouch in front of him, he obediently found an awkward balance on one foot and then the other so he could pull his boots and socks off, too. Loki knelt, and he unbuckled Skurge's belt, and he peeled his dripping wet trousers down, and Skurge stepped out of them, naked and sort of uneasy. Loki smiled a self-satisfied smile and leaned in to press a sucking kiss down by the base of Skurge's still soft cock, then he pushed back up onto his feet. 

"Now undress me," Loki said, and he held his hands out wide as Skurge looked at him, fucking bemused by what was happening. He paused, taking a breath like that might make all this feel less strange, but it really, really didn't. He felt like a colossal, towering idiot as he reached out and tugged the neatly tied bow in the drawstring at Loki's waist, then he stepped in closer and he ran both hands down over Loki's hips, dislodging the flimsy trousers so they fell to the floor at his feet. He stepped out of them and absently nudged them aside with one foot, stark naked underneath. And okay, maybe he really wasn't Skurge's usual type, but that absolutely didn't seem to matter. He couldn't think of anyone he'd ever wanted more, and that seemed like magic more than the physics-defying trousers had.

Loki stepped around him. He trailed one hand over Skurge's chest, over his shoulder, stood behind him and traced the long outside line of his tattoos down the length of his back to the crack of his arse. He shivered. 

"Should I take these as a hint?" Loki asked, casually, right by his ear, with his hands spread out at the small of Skurge's back. He brushed where Skurge knew the tattoos were with his thumbs.

"If you want," Skurge replied. His voice sounded thick.

Loki pressed the tip of one finger to Skurge's coccyx and rubbed there firmly. "What do _you_ want?" he asked, and the pressure was maddening. Skurge clenched his hands into fists at his sides. His cock started to stiffen. His breath seemed tight. 

"Fuck me," Skurge said. His cheeks burned. He closed his eyes. He jabbed his nails into his palms. "I want you to fuck me." 

Loki chuckled lowly, and Skurge couldn't help but feel like the joke was on him. "I'd be happy to oblige," Loki said, then he moved his hands away and Skurge felt him rub the thick tip of his cock against the crack of his arse. His insides did a fucking dance and he flushed with heat as he realised Loki was hard, and he was hard for him, or at least because of him, but then Loki nudged him forward toward the bed. 

"On your hands and knees," Loki said. "On the edge of the bed." So Skurge did exactly that, because he didn't particularly want to get thrown out for some kind of weird sexual insubordination; he went to the bed and he knelt on the edge of the mercifully firm mattress and he leaned down on his hands. He felt precarious, right on the edge like that with his feet and ankles hooked down over the side, and he felt exposed, more and more so as he shuffled his knees apart awkwardly. His face felt hot and his pulse was quick and he almost jumped a damn mile when Loki slid his hands up over the back of his thighs. 

"Are you nervous, Skurge?" Loki asked, his tone somewhere between pleasant and amused. He rested his hands at Skurge's waist and his cock against his arse. "Am _I_ making you nervous?"

"Yeah," Skurge replied, bizarrely telling the truth about it. Maybe because he thought Loki would probably have known if he lied, or maybe because giving Loki ammunition to embarrass him just seemed like the right thing to do.

"Has it been some time?"

"Yeah." 

Loki stepped away and retrieved a pot of some kind of lube and Skurge hung his head down low. Loki ran two fingers down the length of his spine from the back of his neck to the cleft of his arse, and then he dipped his fingertips into the lube. He rubbed them between Skurge's cheeks, against the rim of his hole, making it pull tight in anticipation. Skurge felt his cock fill up even harder. Then Loki, slowly, eased one slick finger into him. 

"You're very tight," Loki said, maybe aiming for conversational, maybe aiming for observational, but his voice sounded off. Skurge felt himself pull even tighter around him, once, a couple of times, before Loki pushed a second finger against him. It really had been a long time, though; Skurge's old brothers-in-arms had been good for a drunken fumble every now and then, or a celebratory blowjob after a battle, and some of them had liked to take it up the arse from time to time, but... well, Skurge had never really been sure if he trusted them not to make fun of him for liking it himself. At least with Loki he knew he couldn't trust him. He _knew_ Loki would make fun of him. He maybe still thought he deserved that. 

He pushed back against Loki's hand and almost fell off the damn bed because of it, so Loki pulled his fingers out and slicked his cock instead. He pressed the head to Skurge's hole and when he pushed in, slowly, bit by bit by bit, still standing, his hands gripping Skurge's hips, Skurge felt absurdly safer. He had Loki's cock spreading him wide open, pushed up balls-deep inside him, but at least he couldn't fall. 

Loki fucked him slowly. At some point, he slipped both hands down in front of Skurge's wide-spread thighs and held him there, his fingers hooked under them, as he moved in him. Skurge knew he wasn't helpless but he almost felt like it as he went down on his forearms and swallowed hard. Loki felt so fucking big inside him, stretching him, making his damn balls tingle and his cock ache, and he pushed back against him, meeting his next thrust with a slap of skin on skin. He hadn't been had like that in a couple of hundred years. He wondered if he was going to regret it, like that last time.

Loki fucked him _slowly_. He raked his nails down Skurge's back, down his tattoos, then framed his waist with his hands and fucked him just a little harder. Loki's breath got louder over the crackle of the fire. Skurge groaned and pushed back against him. Loki's hands tightened. His thrusts got shorter, shallower, and he hissed a breath in through his teeth and fuck, _fuck_, that was hot, no rhythm, losing control, Loki fucking him and fucking him all huge and hard until he bucked and groaned and pushed in deep and that was it: Loki came inside him, pulsing with it, gripping hard. Skurge could've almost come just from that, and the way Loki sounded, and the way he tightened reflexively around Loki's cock as he pulled out. 

But he didn't come. His cock was so hard it ached as he knelt there, with Loki idly rubbing him between his cheeks as he caught his breath. He almost thought that was it, and Loki would tell him to leave, and he'd limp back to his own room in his cold, wet clothes and if his erection hadn't just wilted into nothing by the time he got there, he'd have to finish himself off under the blankets. Maybe he'd still be slick enough to push a couple of fingers inside himself and pretend he was still with Loki, he thought, but then Loki stood and said, "Turn over. Lie back." 

He did, stiffly, cautiously, and then Loki followed him. Loki straddled Skurge's thighs, shuffled up astride his hips and let Skurge's cock press against his perineum. Skurge looked up at him as Loki raked his long hair back from his face, at the way all his muscles stood out in the flickering light and his cock was only just starting to soften. Loki's gaze met his for a second and Skurge looked away sharply, like he'd been caught red-handed. 

"You know, you can look at me," Loki said. "In fact, I rather enjoy the attention." So Skurge looked at him, all his pale skin flushed pink and his dark hair pushed back and Loki's hands splayed against Skurge's chest as he shifted against him. Skurge took two handfuls of the blanket he was lying on, and his back arched and he groaned out loud as Loki rocked his hips and pushed against his cock. 

It didn't take long. Skurge dug his heels into the mattress and pushed up as Loki pushed down and the next thing he knew he was tensing up and clenching his jaw and coming just like that, straining till it hurt, pushed up behind Loki's balls. He gulped a breath, sure he must be strawberry red in the face, and watched Loki climb off him. He wiped himself down with a cloth, frowning in distaste, and Skurge wondered absently if he should've checked if it was okay if he came like that. It was too late to take it back, but he kind of wished he could. 

"You know, you don't belong here," Loki told him, still standing naked by the bed as he tossed the cloth aside. 

Skurge pushed himself up to sitting. "Oh," he said. "Right." He ran his hands over his shaved head with its hair that never seemed to grow, feeling the prickle of it against his palms, then he shuffled over to the edge of the bed. "Sorry. I'll go." 

Loki planted his hands at Skurge's shoulders and kept him sitting down. "That's not what I mean." 

"If you mean here like here in Valhalla..."

"I don't." Loki paused. "Well, possibly also that. But I mean exactly what I meant last time. You don't belong in the afterlife, Skurge. Have you thought about what I said?"

Loki looked at him and Skurge looked away. 

He kind of wished it had been any one of the other people in Valhalla that he'd gone and got involved with. Sometimes he saw faces he knew, like men he'd fought with or likenesses from paintings, proper heroes from the old days that younger generations still sang songs about. Heimdall was around, too, and most people kept clear of him, because even blind he was still damned perceptive, and Skurge had no reason to speak to him. He'd've probably had a thing or two to say about Hofund if he had, like his old comrades might have had about any of their battles, or even Frigga might have been a safer bet, considering how much her daughter and her second son _didn't_ resemble her. But he was there with Loki, God of Mischief. Loki, who it turned out was the only one there who gave a fuck about him, for whatever reason that was. Skurge didn't want him to leave without him. He didn't want to end up like the others, freezing on the fucking mountain because they knew they didn't belong in the hall.

"Yeah, I've thought about it," he said. 

"And?"

"And you're right. I don't belong here." 

"Then you're going to help me make my daring escape?"

"Yeah." He shrugged. "Yeah, I suppose I am. Yeah." He looked up at Loki. He frowned. "So, what's the plan?'

Loki smiled. "I thought I might steal my father's horse," he said. 

Finally, Skurge understood.

\---

Skurge left after. He went back to his room, though something in him said Loki might even have let him stay the night with him even if he snored, and he lay awake naked and cold because his clothes were still wet and feeling like the biggest fucking idiot in all the Nine Realms. Maybe he hadn't actually believed Loki was interested in him, not really, and maybe he should've felt relieved to understand what was going on at last, but it didn't feel much of a relief. It felt like a crushing fucking disappointment, but at least it made perfect sense. 

The fact was, Loki wanted him for what he could do for him. All that time, Loki had just been securing his loyalty through sex, or maybe mostly through the idea of it. Sex and a kind of awkward companionship that hadn't made a lot of sense because maybe Loki was just bad at it. He wondered, as he lay awake, if that was what Hela would've been like if she'd lost her powers, too. But the thing was, he knew even then that he was going to do it. It really didn't matter to Skurge if he was being used for Loki's grand resurrection or not, because he'd known since the moment he'd arrived that he really didn't belong in Valhalla. This was his way out as much as it was Loki's.

"So, Sleipnir," Skurge said, as they left the hall after breakfast the following day. "Your father's winged, magic, immortal horse. The one that won't let anyone else ride him. _That_ horse?"

"Does my father have any other horses that can fly me - _us_ \- out of Valhalla?" Loki said. 

"Well, no." 

"Then assume that's the one I mean." 

They went outside, and sat side by side on a wooden bench in the shade of the trees in Idunn's orchard. 

"So, you're going to ride a horse all the way to Midgard?" Skurge asked, as he juggled awkwardly with three golden apples. He didn't care that he sucked at it, or that he was making a fool of himself, because he knew Loki didn't care, either. All Skurge was was a means to an end. 

"Of course not." Loki smiled, all teeth, and grabbed one of the apples Skurge was juggling - he dropped one of the others and swore under his breath while Loki took a bite. "I'm going to ride a horse to Hel and then use the magic mirror to get to Midgard." 

"That would've been my second guess," Skurge muttered. What he should've asked was how Loki knew all of this, and what the fuck a magic mirror was, but he had a feeling Loki wouldn't feel much like explaining. 

They fought for a while after that, in the field, with their spears. It almost felt like Loki was trying to let him win, but at the last moment he couldn't quite convince himself to follow through. 

"So, when?" Skurge asked, as Loki held down a hand and helped him up from the ground where he'd just dropped him. 

"Tomorrow," Loki replied. He still had Skurge's wrist clasped in his hand. He was stripped to the waist and Skurge fucking hated that he was still attracted to him, even knowing what he knew about why he was even talking to him. 

"That soon?"

Loki shrugged. He stepped in close and patted Skurge's cheek. "Well, there's no time like the present," he said, but he probably just wanted to be sure Skurge wouldn't have time to change his mind. Not that he was going to. Valhalla hadn't exactly been a paradise to him. He was half convinced all it would take was another few years sitting at that table and he'd go join the other outcasts in the mountains, and he'd've rather blinked out of existence altogether than spend forever in the cold like that. 

That night, he took his place at the table for dinner. He listened to the chatter and the songs and as he ate in the draught from the door that had never seemed to bother Loki and he wondered if his name would still be there when he was gone, carved into the tabletop. The others' were, but they were technically still there, just huddled in a cave or buried a in fucking snow drift or something. Then he went to bed - Loki gave him a look that might've been an invitation but he pretended that he didn't notice. He'd already agreed to help so Loki didn't need to give him any more persuasion, and he didn't need to feel any more like a fool than he already did. 

When the door opened, hours before dawn in his last night in his crappy room, he thought it must be Loki. Maybe there was more to the plan that wasn't just _ride a magic horse out of the afterlife and hope you don't plunge off his back into oblivion_. But when he pulled the blanket back to look, it really, really wasn't Loki. 

"You're going to do something stupid," Heimdall said. 

"Am I?"

Heimdall closed the door. "That wasn't a question," he said, and he put the lamp he didn't need down on the table. Skurge made a face, probably because the fact Heimdall had brought a lamp for his benefit couldn't mean anything good, and Heimdall might've been blind but Skurge wasn't idiot enough to believe he couldn't see what he was doing with his face. 

"So, what are you doing here?" Skurge asked, and Heimdall stepped forward. 

"You'll need this," he replied, and he pulled a long, shiny ribbon out of a pocket under his coat. Skurge frowned as he took it. "And when you see Thor, tell him I said hello." 

"I don't understand." 

"You will." Heimdall smiled wryly. "I hope he appreciates what you're doing for him." He didn't have to say his name; they both knew he meant Loki. 

"Who says I'm not doing it for myself?"

"I do. You haven't known what to do for yourself since you got here." He turned and went back to the door, picking the lamp up on the way. Then he paused and he pointed at the ribbon sitting in Skurge's hands. "Don't forget that. And if you fail, don't come back here. Odin might take Loki back, but chances are he won't take you." 

Then he made his exit and he closed the door behind him, and he left Skurge sitting there in the dark. The whole lot of them were mad, and Skurge wished he'd never met any of them.

In the morning, he washed alone in his room and he ate a golden apple sitting outside the hall as he waited for Loki. When he arrived, they left together, without very much with them - not even their armour - so they wouldn't be suspected, and they climbed the path into the foothills, and they dropped down the hill into the clearing. When they got there, the foals came for their usual apples and Loki was pleased to oblige. And then, like somehow he knew exactly what was happening, Sleipnir rose. 

"This might be simpler if we had a bridle," Loki said as they ducked through the fence into the clearing, and Skurge frowned as he patted down his pockets. He produced the ribbon and Loki frowned, too. "Where did you get that?" he asked, gesturing at it. 

"Heimdall," Skurge replied, and Loki laughed. He shook his head. 

"He gave you the chain the dwarves made to bind Fenrir," he said, sounding bitter but almost incredulous. "Of course he did. Why would he give that to me?" But then Sleipnir came toward him, his back taller than they were, grey like a storm cloud, and he bowed down low. It made no fucking sense, but Skurge tied the ribbon - the chain - around him like a makeshift harness and then he hopped up onto his back. He held a hand down to Loki. Loki let him swing him up behind him. 

He'd never ridden any of the horses his family had raised, at least not after his tenth birthday when the rules forbade it, and never off the ground. But Sleipnir unfurled his huge grey wings, flapped so hard it kicked up dirt off the ground, and took off just like that. Skurge's hands were wrapped up in the chain they'd used as a harness just so he couldn't fall off and Loki sitting behind him with his arms wrapped tight around his waist. The rush of the air made his eyes sting and the chain bit into his hands but that was fine, it wasn't going to kill him. It wouldn't even scratch.

Countryside flashed by. The mountaintop flashed by. The air was cold and thin and Skurge made Loki loop his belt through his so if he passed out from it then at least he wouldn't fall. Loki grumbled under his breath, not loud enough to hear over the rushing wind, but he did as he was told, just before they found the end of a rainbow and absolutely did pass out. 

That was the last he saw of Valhalla.

\---

There are two things Skurge remembers most about Hel: the High Hall, and his parents' house. 

When they woke up, still mostly on Sleipnir's back, though mostly because of the chains wrapped tight around Skurge's hands, they weren't over Valhalla anymore. It was Hel that was spread out below them, a landscape of jagged rocks at first, but that gave way to a map of lights that came closer as they descended. The lights became villages then individual houses and they landed, surprisingly softly, in a field by a very familiar cottage on the outskirts of the village closest to the mountain, and so probably closest to their final destination, though Skurge did find himself wondering why Sleipnir hadn't just taken them straight there. If he'd known enough to know they were heading to Hel, he'd probably known enough to aim for the High Hall.

When Skurge looked down at his hands, they were bleeding. And once Loki had detached himself from him and hopped down off Sleipnir's back, he started unwrapping the chain from around Skurge's palms. 

"I'm bleeding," Skurge said. 

Loki raised his brows at him but kept on going. "Yes, you are," he replied. 

"_Why_ am I bleeding?" 

"This isn't Valhalla," Loki said. He unwound another loop and Skurge winced. "This is Hel. Of course you're bleeding." 

"But _why_?"

"Because we're one step closer to Midgard. The dead are protected in Valhalla. They're not protected in Hel. There's no magic in Valhalla because it's so far from life. There's magic in Hel because it's closer to life. Are you an idiot?"

"How do you know all that?"

Loki sighed dramatically and freed Skurge from the chain that had kept them safe on the way to Hel. "The more pertinent question from my point of view is why you _don't_ know," he said, and he tossed the bloodied chain up to Skurge who caught it in his bloody hands and winced again. He tucked the chain back into his coat and completely without grace dropped down from Sleipnir's back, who wandered off a few feet and started munching on something in the cottage's garden. 

"Excuse me!" Loki and Skurge both turned. "Your horse is eating my carrots." 

There was a woman there, all brown hair hanging in a braid down her back and a long dress about a thousand years out of fashion. Skurge took a step forward. He frowned. He took a step back again. "Mum?" he said, taken off guard by it, though he supposed that answered the question about why Sleipnir had stopped there. 

She frowned, too. She looked him up and down like he'd just done to her and then suddenly her face lit up and she threw her arms around him. "Loki!" she said, as he tried not to get blood on her dress, and he could practically feel Loki's gaze drilling into his back. She stepped away and took his wrists in her hands. "You're bleeding! Come inside. Your dad will be so pleased to see you when he gets home." 

She bustled through the door, and Skurge followed her, and Loki followed him. Inside, the house was exactly the same as the place he'd grown up in on Vanaheim. His dad was out and Loki loitered in the corner of the kitchen, leaning against the wall as Skurge's mum washed his hands, poked antiseptic ointment at the cuts where the chain had been, then bandaged them up. She talked a mile a minute, and he barely got a word in. Loki, strangely, didn't even try. 

"Are you one of the Einherjar, too?" she asked Loki, once she'd finished bandaging. 

Loki pushed himself away from the wall and stepped up behind Skurge with his hands on the back of his chair. "In a manner of speaking," he replied. 

"Oh, that's nice," she said. "His father and I were gone by the time he was a fancy warrior. We find out bits and pieces of what's happening out there in the universe, but we never got to meet any of his friends." She looked at them both, Skurge sitting at the kitchen table and Loki hovering behind him, and her eyes went wide. "Oh! Are you the friend he wrote to us about?" She leaned closer on the table. "Are the two of you... _together_?"

Skurge twisted to look up at Loki. Loki looked down at Skurge. Skurge felt quite a lot like he wanted to become one with the kitchen table. But then Loki put one of his hands on one of Skurge's shoulders and he squeezed in a really _familiar_ way. When Skurge glanced up at him again, he was smiling pleasantly across the table at Skurge's mother. He almost looked like he was telling the truth when he said, "Yes. Yes, we are." 

"Oh, that's wonderful. And what's your name?"

Skurge groaned. He dropped his head down against the table. "Mum, he's Loki of Asgard. Loki Odinson. You know? Prince Loki." 

"Oh! Oh, have you come to take your sister's place?"

Loki's hand went instantly tighter at Skurge's shoulder, sudden enough and tight enough that it made him flinch. 

"What do you mean?" he asked, as Skurge sat back up. 

"Well, she was the queen here. But the High Hall's been empty since she left. I just thought maybe..." She trailed off and then left the table to wash her hands. "You look just like her, you know. I should have known the moment I saw you. Not that she came down here very often. She mostly stayed up on the mountain." 

Loki's grip tightened again and Skurge stood up abruptly, which mercifully knocked his hand away; he didn't feel much like getting bruised to go with his cuts. "Look, mum, this is great and I want to tell you all about what's been going on but I'm tired," he said, not feeling too bad about it because he really did feel tired for the first time since he'd died. "I'm really, really tired. Is there... have you got a spare room? Just for tonight." 

She flicked him with water. "Your dad built all this, you know," she said. "Just like it was on Vanaheim when we had you. He made your room, too, just in case you ever needed it." She threw her arms around him again and he patted her back awkwardly with his injured hands. "Oh, Loki. You can sleep in your room. You and your friend. Of course you can. And if you need anything, I'll be here." 

Skurge disentangled himself, though honestly he'd've quite liked to have stayed right there, if only Loki hadn't been there, too. He motioned to Loki, who ignored him the first time, so he did it again with a grimace on his face. Then they left the kitchen and Skurge led the way to where he knew his room would be waiting. He closed the door behind them; Loki leaned back against it and Skurge sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. 

"_Loki_?" Loki questioned. 

Skurge ran his hands over his head and he scowled at the floor when he nearly dislodged his bandages. "Look, I was called that for about a hundred years before you were born," he said. "But then there you were. So I changed it. I had people calling me _Odinson_ for years because they thought that was fucking hilarious." 

"It's a good name," Loki said. 

"Just not _my_ name." 

"I said it was good. I didn't say it suited you." 

Skurge sighed. He stood up again. "You should take the bed," he said. "I'll go make sure the horse hasn't eaten the whole garden." And Loki narrowed his eyes at him but let him go. It was for the best, really, because Skurge wasn't sure how much he wanted to see him right at that moment. He had no idea how he was going to explain to his dead mother that Loki Odinson wasn't really his lover, and he had no idea why Loki would have let her think it in the first place. Except maybe he'd thought the connection to Hela might ring alarm bells, maybe even literally, because neither of them could have any real idea how she'd been thought of in Hel. Maybe he thought being Skurge's lover was safer. He probably assumed Skurge would just play along. To be fair, he was probably going to.

Skurge used the slightly bloody chain to secure Sleipnir to the gatepost, safely away from the vegetable garden, and cursed when he saw he'd started bleeding through his dressings already. But he sat outside, and fed Sleipnir one of his last golden apples. He 

In the end, he fell asleep there, leaning against the fence next to Odin's stolen magic horse. 

\---

He woke in the early morning, when Sleipnir nudged him with his nose, snuffling at him like he wanted something to eat. Skurge only had a couple of apples left but he fed one to the massive stormcloud of a horse then untied the chain that was binding him there. After all, it wasn't like he couldn't just return to Valhalla and the whole orchard full of apples, or go ravage someone else's vegetable garden, and he couldn't find it in him to keep him chained up any longer. 

There was a stream behind the house that ran into a wood; he could hear it from the garden and he knew he could have asked his mum for hot water but instead he just borrowed a washcloth and a towel and he made his way down to the stream. He managed to undress there using only his fingertips and he washed carefully, but when he knelt and tried to stroke himself, he knew there was no way to do it without making his injured hands worse. He groaned, frustrated, and sat back on his heels, half-hard and irritated. Hel kind of sucked.

The first he knew he wasn't alone was the splash of feet in the stream. He would've jumped up but two warm hands settled on his shoulders and a leather-clad knee went into the water either side of his thighs and as Loki's clothed chest - because it _had_ to be Loki - pressed up against his back, he wrapped one hand around Skurge's cock. 

"I can do that for you," Loki said, by his ear.

"Why?" Skurge asked, and Loki's hand went still around him. Skurge heard him take a breath. 

"Well, primarily because you can't do it yourself," he replied. "You probably recall having an unbreakable chain wrapped around your hands while flying away from the Hall of Fallen Heroes on the back of my father's magic horse. Or did I miss something?"

Skurge sighed. He looked down at Loki's hand around him. "I mean, you don't have to do it." 

"I'm aware of that." 

"So you want to?"

"I don't have an active desire not to." 

"That's not the same thing." 

"No, it's not. But do you want me to stop?"

He knew he shouldn't have wanted him to. It would have been the best thing all round if he could have just said _yes_, and stopped, put his clothes back on and gone inside. He was hungry, for the first time since Asgard, and maybe his dad was home, and then he wouldn't have to deal with Loki. The only problem with that was he really didn't want him to stop, no matter how convenient it would have been if he had. 

"No," he said. 

"No what, exactly?"

"No, I don't want you to stop." 

"Then you want me to keep going?"

"Yes." 

"Yes what?"

Skurge scrunched his eyes shut. "Yes, I want you to keep going." 

So Loki did exactly that, though there was a second when Skurge almost expected him to just walk away anyway, no matter what he'd just made him say. But he didn't - his grip tightened a fraction and his free hand splayed down low over Skurge's belly, keeping him pressed against him. When Loki stroked him, he could feel the rise and fall of his chest against his back and his breath at the back of his shoulder and his hair hanging down against his skin and for a start all he did was just pinch Skurge's foreskin up over the tip of his cock and then ease it back, over and over again, slowly, almost maddeningly slowly. His nails raked lightly at Skurge's abs and then he slid that hand down to cup his balls, squeezing lightly, making Skurge shiver. He felt himself leaning back against Loki for support, so Loki's hand moved again, going up to rest over his sternum, one fingertip and thumb pressed to his collarbones as he stroked him. He hated how much he liked that, knowing how it would have looked if anyone else had seen them - like he was Loki's, or Loki was his, like what he'd told Skurge's mother was true. He guessed if nothing else, he really was Loki's, whether they were fucking or not, but he'd done that to himself. 

In the end, Skurge came like that. Loki's pace never did speed up, and what he was doing with his hand never changed - he stroked him there, slowly, just over the tip, until Skurge's thighs were fucking trembling and he'd basically forgotten how not to curse under his breath on every exhale. Somehow, he managed to stay still as his insides began to tingle and tighten and warm and he could feel it creeping up on him, in every shaky breath and the press of his fingertips to his thighs and the strain of his muscles till he was squeezing his eyes shut and fuck, oh fuck, he came over Loki's hand in almost painful bursts. He came with something like a fucking whimper and maybe he should've been embarrassed but somehow he really didn't care. There didn't seem to be any point.

"You're so predictable," Loki said, lowly, almost fondly, as he moved his hand away from Skurge's cock and let the stream they were both kneeling in wash it clean. Then he moved his other hand, too, and rested them both at Skurge's hips. He rubbed his hipbones lightly, absently, while Skurge was still leaning back against his chest. "Are you like this with all your lovers?"

"Predictable?"

"Easy to please." 

Skurge snorted, not sure if that was meant to be an insult or a compliment or just a statement of fact somehow. "Probably," he admitted, then he turned just far enough to look at him one-eyed. "I mean, it helps that you're good at this, too." 

Loki smiled sharply. "Oh, I know," he said, then he pressed a quick and probably mocking kiss to the back of Skurge's shoulder before pushing back up to his feet. He stepped around in front of Skurge and offered him a hand, which Skurge almost took before he remembered the cuts. He winced and pulled his hand back and Loki made a face and watched him stand himself up instead. 

He didn't expect Loki to help him after that - he expected him to leave him there and go back to the house - but he did help. He picked up the towel and he dried him, not particularly gently but Skurge really didn't expect gentle. He kept looking at Loki as he ran the cloth over his arms, holding him by the wrist, and as he dropped to a crouch to dry his legs with his free hand wrapped around his ankle. He was looking at him as he dried his chest and his abs and his cock and his balls and his perineum, really thorough, _really_ thorough, almost enough to get him hard again. Then he started handing him his clothes and helping him with buttons and fiddly laces. 

"You know, you didn't have to do this," Skurge said. 

Loki raised his brows at him as he was folding up the damp towel. "I know," he replied. "There's surprisingly little that I _have_ to do." 

"It's just..." Skurge sighed. He rubbed his face with one forearm so he wouldn't hurt his hand. "Look, I know I get my brains from my mum and my looks from my dad, but I'm not completely stupid." 

"I don't think I've ever said you were," Loki said. "But go on." 

"I mean, I know what's going on." 

"You do?"

"Well, yeah. Your sister used knives to get people to do what she wanted them to do. You..." He shrugged. He gestured at him. "You do what you do. But you don't have to pretend you like me. It's not like I won't do whatever you like." 

Loki frowned. "So you think I'm having sex with you so you'll help me?" he said. "Is that honestly what you think this is?"

"Are you telling me it's not?"

Loki laughed. He sounded amused, but he threw the towel at Skurge and that was that; he turned and walked away and left Skurge standing there, wondering if he'd done the right thing. 

When he thought about it, though, he was more certain. Because Loki hadn't told him he was wrong. 

\---

Loki was gone when he got back to the house. 

Skurge told himself that wasn't a bad thing. After all, he'd done his part: he'd got Loki to Hel, and now he didn't need him anymore, because the last part of the plan only really needed a magic mirror, not an ex-Einherjar in possession of an unbreakable chain and a really stupid attraction to a temporarily dead Asgardian prince. And if Loki didn't need him, maybe it was better that he stayed where he was, because he was fairly sure that was where he'd always been meant to end up. Not Valhalla with the fallen heroes, not Midgard or the rest of the universe with the living, but Hel with both his parents. Maybe Sleipnir would visit sometimes and eat the carrots in the garden. Maybe one day the foals he'd left behind would be strong enough to come there, too. 

Life in Hel was different to life in Valhalla; that much would have been completely clear even if he hadn't arrived with injured hands. They didn't need to eat, but they'd feel hungry if they didn't. They didn't need to sleep but they'd feel tired, they wouldn't die from wounds but they'd feel them, and nothing reset the way it did in the Golden Hall - he hadn't needed to wash in the mornings because he woke up clean and shaved each day, but he could feel a day's growth of hair over his scalp. And he was hungry, so his mum cooked. Maybe she and his dad seemed younger than he remembered, and that was maybe because he'd lived to be older than they ever were, but her cooking tasted just the same. 

He got more used to the idea of staying there as the day wore on. He went fishing with his dad so they'd have food for dinner, though he couldn't hold a rod because of his hands, and they sat together on the jetty built out into the lake. He looked the same as he had before - tall and strong with rough hands and his long brown hair plaited down his back. Skurge had had long hair once, a long time ago. He'd looked a lot like his dad, he thought.

"You'll be better off without him, son," his father said, giving him a pat on the shoulder, and Skurge knew that wasn't just meant to make him feel better. His dad really seemed to believe it. 

"Why's that?" he asked. 

"Just ask anyone here what they thought of Hela." 

He found himself wanting to stick up for Loki, for some stupid reason he didn't really understand, even though he knew his dad was right. All Loki had wanted was his help, not a lover, not even a henchman. All he needed now was the mirror, however that was meant to work.

Days passed like that. Skurge's dad wasn't much of a fisherman and even less of a hunter but he was good with his hands and good at solving problems and he traded work for food. Skurge was more than happy to do the same; maybe he wasn't going to help with anyone's maths but he could patch a roof with the best of them once his hands were healed, and he could fell trees, and lift timbers. It wasn't the work he'd always wanted to do, but at least in Hel he had a use - people in the village maybe didn't _like_ him, but they liked his mum and dad and as the days turned to a week turned to two, they started growing to appreciate him. It turned out that wearing the right gloves, the unbreakable chain that bound Fenrir was also really great for manual labour, too.

The work tired him out on a daily basis and he went to bed exhausted after eating dinner with his parents. The bedroom was almost exactly like he remembered, except the view of the stream from the window and the colour of the rug, and the bed was ten times better than where he'd slept in Valhalla. He told people stories about the Golden Hall if they asked him, but when he talked about the rooms he always described Loki's and found himself wondering if it even existed now he wasn't there anymore. And, in bed at night, not cold, the room not damp, he wondered what Loki was doing. He knew he was still in Hel - word had spread that Hel had a new king, and some of the villagers had family who worked in the High Hall. They didn't say Loki was as bad as his sister, but they also didn't say much of anything good. 

Skurge thought he understood, too. Loki had been aiming to escape the afterlife and come back to life, but realising he could be a king in Hel must have been a really big temptation, given he was Odin's second son. Even aside from that, there probably wasn't much left of Asgard, but Hel was full of people stretching back to the first kings and Asgardians were running low out there in the galaxy. It seemed like a great opportunity, if you just ignored the everlasting death part. 

Two weeks turned to three and then a month. Loki came down from the hall sometimes, to visit the villages on the way to the city where, unsurprisingly to Skurge, everyone accepted him as their new king. He let the council actually rule, and he didn't make unreasonable demands of them like he heard Hela had. It seemed like maybe he'd be a decent ruler. And every time he and his guards came through the village, Skurge found a really pressing reason to be somewhere else because frankly, he'd made a lot of mistakes in his life and he didn't feel much like being reminded of any of them in his afterlife, at least no more than absolutely necessary. But that was fine because it wasn't like Loki demanded his presence. It was almost easy to pretend he'd never known him at all. Except at night, in bed, when it wasn't easy at all. There were too many things he remembered.

Then, weeks later, when Skurge's hair had started to grow in and he hadn't found the time to shave it off, he was summoned to the hall in the middle of rebuilding a fallen-down section of village wall. The messenger had no information about why, so all Skurge could do was follow her up the winding paths up the side of the mountain that was sharp and rocky and lacking in greenery, nothing like the mountain in Valhalla. Sleipnir, unfortunately, was nowhere to be found; the walk took hours. 

"Skurge," Loki said, when the messenger left them in the throne room. 

Skurge made an awkward sort of half bow and rubbed his dirty hands against his thighs. He felt even more out of place there than he had in Valhalla; there were high, vaulted ceilings and a tall throne and where everything in Asgard had seemed bright and gold, the High Hall was dark, glinting with silver, cold and hard and carved from rock. And one of the walls, something was moving. 

"Your highness." 

"So, you came." 

"What else could I do?"

"An excellent point." Loki tucked his hands behind his back as he looked at him. "Skurge, I want you to do something for me." 

"What's that?"

"Not very long ago you told me you'd do whatever I wanted." He raised his brows. "Was that a lie?"

"No." 

"No what?"

"No, it wasn't a lie." 

"Then does it really matter what I want?"

Skurge smiled, slightly wry and slightly bitter. He knew it should matter. It should have mattered a lot. He should've _needed_ to know what he was getting himself into. And it would've been easy to tell himself he knew Loki wouldn't ask him to do anything he didn't want to do, or at least he wouldn't ask him to do anything he couldn't live with, not like Hela, except he didn't believe that. He wasn't exactly like her but there were similarities and he didn't know Loki would only ask for things he was willing to give. He wasn't sure he knew Loki at all. 

It should've mattered but what he said was, "No." And the worst part was, he meant it. 

\---

Loki's sitting in his kitchen. He's wearing his clothes. All things considered, Skurge thinks he's probably never coming back. 

A fishing village on Midgard isn't Loki's idea of fun and Skurge knows that because there the look of distaste on his face is so clear every time he looks out the window and down toward town. He's got better at blending in, though; sometimes he wears his hair tied back, and sometimes he doesn't wear a tie with his shirt, and he smiles sometimes. Sometimes he's almost charming, when he comes into the pub and sits at the bar and orders a drink. Skurge usually just watches him, because he's working, and because that's not really who Loki is. He doesn't like New Asgard. Skurge is fairly sure he doesn't like most of the people there, either.

Skurge knows he got himself into this, just like he did with Hela. It's his own fault, really - no one to blame but himself. The only person he's got left in the universe is a melodramatic dick who thinks Skurge has nothing better to do with his life than wait for him to visit. The worst part is, he's not exactly wrong about that. 

Back there in the High Hall of Hel, Loki stood at the foot of his sister's throne and he said, "Come with me to Midgard." It wasn't a question, or a suggestion, or anything except a command; they'd just established that Skurge wouldn't have said no anyway. But when Loki gestured broadly toward the huge mirror hanging on the palace wall, he understood. He felt his stomach sink. 

"Now?" he asked. 

"Now," Loki confirmed. 

"My parents--" 

"--were here for a thousand years before you arrived. They survived without you. You don't think they will now?"

Skurge clenched his jaw, released it, clenched his hands into fists, released them, and asked himself if he could really do what Loki was asking. He didn't want to leave. There was nothing much for him in Midgard, or in the universe at large, that he couldn't have in Hel. He'd never have children there, okay, but what did that matter? He'd found his parents. His grandparents were in the next village, and their parents were nearby, and aunts and uncles and cousins and generations of his family back as far as the founding of Asgard. He had a purpose and a home so what did he want from Midgard? Actual life really wasn't better than the afterlife. 

He supposes he could've said no. At the time, he supposed he could've said no. He could've gone back down the mountain to his room in the house that was just like the place he'd grown up, slept in his bed and worked with his father, and maybe one day he'd feel like he'd redeemed himself. And at the very least, he would've liked to have said goodbye, but Loki wasn't giving him the time. 

"Skurge," Loki said, sharply. "Are you coming? I suppose people here might start to warm up to you in a couple of millennia..."

Skurge winced. He swallowed. He nodded.

When Loki stepped toward the mirror, he went with him. When Loki set his hand on the glass, he did the same. And it rippled under their hands, like water, like liquid metal, like _moving_ liquid metal that started to flow up his arm and he almost pulled his hand away, except when he looked at Loki, the expression on his face said this was all as he'd expected it to be. So, he let it happen. It wasn't so much out of trust in general as trust that Loki wouldn't let anything happen to himself. 

He closed his eyes just as the mirror's surface reached them, cold and tight and really unsettling. When he opened them again, they weren't in Hel; they were standing on a cliff overlooking the sea, and he knew he was alive again. He didn't know how he knew, but he knew.

"This is where my father died," Loki said, and he waved one hand at the town down the hill. "I expect my brother is down there."

So that was where they went, and Loki's brother really was there, and the Valkyrie, and half of all the others that they'd tried to save from Hela. Everyone knew Thanos had taken the rest. 

The wizards came almost immediately, while they were sitting in Thor's house and Loki wasn't even trying not to grimace at the look of the place. Skurge knew Loki wouldn't have agreed to have his magic bound so quickly if he'd been planning to stay. It seemed Thor knew, too, when he said, "So, brother, where will you go?"

Loki didn't say, possibly because he didn't know, but Skurge suspected he had plans and he'd probably had them since Valhalla. Then they gave Skurge a house that needed more work than anyone else had felt like putting in, and two days after that, Loki left; Skurge didn't expect him to return, at least not soon. 

Soon after that, Skurge started work. By the time Loki came back eight weeks later, the house was almost finished. Loki disapproved of its size, and its proportions, and the colours, and the decoration, and the fact it was so far outside the town, but he still slept in Skurge's bed and Skurge slept downstairs on his too-small sofa. In the morning, he sat in Skurge's seat at the kitchen table, rubbing the place where Skurge's name was carved. He looked more out of place there than Skurge had in either one of their afterlives.

"You know, this isn't exactly Valhalla," Loki said. "It's not even Asgard." He gestured dramatically around the room. "How do you live like this?" 

"You get used to it," Skurge replied, but he's fairly sure they both knew he was lying. Still, when Loki left again, Skurge found his name carved there opposite his. He had no idea what that was meant to mean but he sits there sometimes, in the place that's marked with the name they sort of share, and tries not to think about him. He's sitting there right now, wondering how he's going to move on from all this bullshit when he's gone.

Loki commissioned his own house the next time he returned; it wasn't done the next time he was there, so he slept in Skurge's bed. It was done the next time he was there after that, but there was no furniture in it; Loki slept in Skurge's bed again. The next time, the fact there was Asgardian furniture there that was worth more than Skurge's whole house didn't seem to deter him from taking the bed, so after that, Skurge replaced the sofa with a sofa bed. It maybe wasn't very comfortable, but it was better than waking up with a crick in his neck. 

Then, the next time he came back, Loki stood in the living room doorway and he said, "This is ridiculous. Come to bed."

Skurge patted the sofa. "I'm fine here," he replied. 

Loki sighed. "I think you mistook that for a question," he told him, then he turned and headed up the stairs. Skurge rubbed his face, tugged his lengthening hair, and then followed like Loki's pet dog. Maybe more like a pet wolf.

Loki had him on his hands and knees that night, slow, and hard enough to knock the bed against the wall with every thrust. Skurge didn't try to act like he didn't enjoy it - he shoved back against him and fuck, he'd missed that, for a whole year by then he'd missed that - but somehow he was also glad when it was over. And Loki was already asleep when he got back out of the bathroom, so he just slipped back to the sofa downstairs.

When Loki came back the next time, he wasn't alone when he stepped off the ship. He walked two horses down the gangway, bright white, winged, and Skurge didn't really know what to say. 

"How?" he asked, as the two foals, pretty much full-grown by then, nudged him with their noses. He scratched them between the ears and they snuffled at his shirt, like maybe he was hiding golden apples somewhere on his person, and Loki gave him an almost withering look. He only had one apple left - turned out they didn't rot like normal fruit so it sat like an ornament in his living room, but Loki's look could've probably finished it off.

"Do you really want to know?" Loki asked. And he did, really did, but he also knew better than to ask. 

He looks after the horses now, when he's not working, in a stable it made his bank account weep to build on the empty land behind his house. He keeps them warm and fed and the Valkyrie rides them when she goes into battle, alternating so they don't feel left out. He'd never thought to name them, but she called them Róta and Herja, and they answer to their names like they've always had them.

"You know, no one's going to care if you ride them," she told him, when she brought Herja back after some kind of Avengers crisis. He started washing Herja down, and the Valkyrie leaned against the fencepost, watching him. She stole an apple from the tree by the stable door and crunched her way through it while he completely ignored her; he's not going to try to ride the winged horses and they both know that. He's not exactly a Valkyrie and he doesn't want to know if they'd let him or not.

The last time Loki came back, Skurge came home from work late at night and the light was on in the bedroom - he could see it all the way from where the pavement ends before he slogged through the thick January snow, like a lighthouse so he didn't even need to fumble his phone out of his pocket and try to get the flashlight function to work with his gloves still on. Loki's boots were sitting just inside the front door, wet where the snow had melted on them, and his cape was hanging on the coat rack next to Skurge's best leather jacket. They looked out of place. They always do, just like Loki does.

He went into the kitchen and he poured himself a drink and he drank it slowly at the kitchen table before he went upstairs, like it might brace him or something for what he was going to find up there. When he went up, Loki was lounging on his unmade bed in one of Skurge's t-shirts that's at least one size too big for him because apparently he couldn't be arsed to open the drawer in the dresser and find something that actually belongs to him. He was reading the book Skurge had left next to the bed, some crime novel or other he'd borrowed from the library to help him fall asleep. 

"Well, it's about time," Loki said, then he waved the book in the air. "You know, this is terrible. Did someone dare you to read it or did you lose a bet?" He dropped it carelessly onto the table by the bed and lost Skurge's place when the bookmark fell onto the floor. Skurge is used to that sort of thing, though. He just sighed and went down on one knee by the side of the bed. 

"What can I do for you, your highness?" he asked. Maybe he sounded sarcastic. Maybe he just sounded resigned.

Loki frowned. "You know, Skurge, you don't seem very pleased to seem me."

"Well, I just got home from work," Skurge said. "It's past midnight. I'm tired. You know, if you always turn up in the middle of the night, people are going to start thinking you're a vampire."

"I'm fairly sure I don't want to drink your blood, Skurge."

"You know that and I know that. But no one else knows that." 

"Then maybe next time I'll aim for daylight," Loki said. 

He knows you don't trust people, especially not people as high up as a prince, and especially not men like Loki. You can't take them at their word, he's always known that, and Hela reminded him of it more than once, so when Loki said, "So, how are things on Earth?" Skurge just pressed his lips into a flat line and shrugged his shoulders. 

"You know, that wasn't a rhetorical question," Loki said. "Usually, when I ask a question it's because I expect an answer." 

Skurge grimaced. "What answer do you expect?" he asked, and Loki frowned sharply. 

"You could start with the truth," he said. "Or an entertaining lie, at least. Don't just shrug your shoulders at me, Skurge; it's common and you know how I feel about that." 

He does know how Loki feels about that. They were dead in Valhalla for less than a year but he knows how Loki feels about most things, and he's also fairly sure he's not going to change now himself. He used to want to, before Ragnarok, before Hela, before Loki pretending to be Odin before that, back when he was still a soldier, because he never really fit in with the Einherjar - he used to want to talk like them, and walk like them, and say the same sort of things as them, and pretend he wasn't a stonemason's son. None of his family had ever gone to war. They built halls and trained horses and the closest any of them ever got to battle before him was making swords for other men and women to wield. Loki seems to think he's some kind of outcast, but he's not; he's their prince and what's left of their people remember him helping Thor save them. What's left of their people remember Skurge holding an axe. Only one of them is ever going back to Valhalla and Skurge knows it's not him. He knew it that night like he knows it now.

"I threw your brother out of the pub last week," he said. "He said he couldn't believe he was getting sent home and didn't I know it was his day? Thor's Day. You know. Named after him." He sat down at the table. He rubbed at the place in the wood where he'd carved his own name, to remind him of another place he'd been. "Well, it wasn't Thursday. It was Saturday." He shrugged again, deliberately. "That's how it is here. How are things wherever the fuck you go to?"

Loki stood. He came closer. "You've never asked about where I go before," he said. "Do you want to know? I'm sure it's more interesting than..." He gestured around the room, the small bedroom Skurge worked really fucking hard to put together with what he makes from throwing drunks out of a bar. 

Skurge scowled. "Fuck you," he muttered, not that he sounded angry. That's probably because he wasn't; what he was was tired, of Midgard and of Loki and of people asking him what death was like. He was tired of burning himself on the pan when he was cooking dinner for one, and Loki complaining when he cooked for two. And he was really, really tired of waiting. 

"Would you like to?" Loki asked, brows raised. "I thought you preferred things the other way around."

"No, I..." Skurge frowned. He sighed, because more than any other thing he was tired of dealing with Loki's bullshit. "Would I like to _what_?"

"Would you like to fuck me?" Loki clarified, straightforwardly, not a hint of self-consciousness about it. He straightened the neck of Skurge's shirt, his fingertips brushing Skurge's skin and making his face flush hotly, like maybe Loki knew what he was thinking. The fact was, he would've liked that. He'd thought about it more than once. He'd thought about touching him, because he'd never really done that. He'd thought about pushing him down on his back on the bed and kissing his smug, smirky mouth. He'd thought about sucking him, and fucking him, and leaving bruises on him, so when he looked in the mirror when he'd left again, he'd be remembering who put them there. He'd thought about so much that he wasn't even sure where he'd start.

Then Loki looked at him intently as he smoothed Skurge's shirt down against his chest.

"Are you mocking me?" Skurge asked. 

"No more than usual," Loki replied. He ran one hand down, over the flimsy fabric of Skurge's shirt, to the waistband of his similarly flimsy trousers. "Does that bother you?"

His mouth twisted wryly. "No more than usual," he replied. 

"So it bothers you." 

"Maybe, yeah." 

"And you're aware I don't intend to change?" 

"Yeah, I'm aware."

Loki stepped back. "Take your clothes off," he said.

Skurge laughed, but he complied. When Loki tied him to the bed with the unbreakable chain, he let him. Loki's fingers traced the sharp lines of Skurge's tattoos and when he had him like that, on his knees, he pulled his head back by his hair and made him arch his spine. Skurge came so hard he couldn't stand for the next twenty minutes, but that was fine because Loki didn't untie him for at least that long. 

"You know, you remind me of your sister," Skurge says, now, as they're sitting at the table, because apparently he's decided to really fuck things up. 

Loki looks at him, sharp but curious. "Do I?" he asks. 

"Yeah. You do."

"Would you care to elaborate?"

"Not really." 

Loki grips the edge of the table. "This is despite the fact I haven't destroyed Asgard lately?"

"Technically, neither did she. That was Surtur." Skurge shrugs. "Or Thor."

Loki sighs. He rubs his eyes, then he rolls both wrists and they crack disconcertingly before he rubs Skurge's name carved on the table. 

"You know, I'm not her." 

"I know. You just could be." 

"But I'm not." 

Skurge doesn't reply. He just sits back in his seat and looks away out the window and he thinks about what an idiot he's been. He never trusted Hela, and he doesn't trust Loki, but for some stupid reason he trusted Thor. 

"So, Skurge," Thor said, clapping him on the shoulder as Skurge passed him by in the pub one night. "Tell me. What did you like so much about Hel that you didn't want to leave?"

"Who says I liked it?" Skurge replied. 

"Well, one of you did, and I think we both know who that wasn't." 

Skurge frowned. He wasn't really meant to, strictly speaking, but he took a seat at Thor's table. "What makes you say that?"

"It's just how it works."

"It's how _what_ works?"

"The mirror." 

Skurge frowned harder. "What are you talking about?"

"The magic mirror. The ones the dwarves made." Thor sat back and gestured hugely. "Big, shiny thing. I don't think you could have missed it." 

"No, I remember the mirror. I mean... all we did was touch the glass." 

"That's how it works. It might be why Hela couldn't leave, or maybe that really was just Odin." 

"Are you drunk again?"

"No!" Thor looked down at his empty tankard. "Well, fine, yes. But that doesn't make me less right." 

Thor eyed him. He finished off his tankard of beer and he eyed him some more. Then he waved the Valkyrie over. "The magic mirror," he said. "How does it work?" She gave him a look that said _you're kidding_. "No, seriously. He doesn't know." 

Then he borrowed her beer and took a swig and while she was scowling at that, she said, like she was talking to a six-year-old, "You need two people, one who wants to leave and one who doesn't. Did we stop teaching history?" She grabbed her drink back, slapped Thor round the back of the head and walked away. Skurge stood back up, too, and he left the room. 

He thought about it for the rest of the night, the ridiculous thing the two of them had said. At least it started out sounding ridiculous but the more he thought about it the more it made sense: he'd known Loki had a plan, and he'd thought he'd understood it in the end, but he'd got nowhere near. He'd made Skurge want to leave Valhalla so he'd help him leave then he'd made him want to stay in Hel so he could get him out of there, too. He'd picked his mark really, really well. Fuck, he'd known exactly what he was doing. And just when Skurge had thought he couldn't feel much worse about what had happened, he'd had it all pointed out. 

Thor left that night of his own accord, which Skurge always preferred because frankly, throwing him out seemed really strange. He maybe wasn't even that drunk, not that time, or at least Skurge thought that till Thor leaned against the doorpost next to him and said, "When you see Loki, tell him I said he owes me a drink." 

"What makes you think I'll see him first?" Skurge replied. 

Thor gave him a skeptical look. "I didn't even see him the last time he came." He shifted closer. He squeezed Skurge's arm, almost like they were friends. "I don't think he'll ever tell you this, because he's _terrible_ with relationships. But do you honestly think he comes here for me?" Then he ambled away toward the house he shared with Korg and Miek, and left Skurge staring after him. 

He tried to put it out of his mind, but what Thor had said stuck with him. He lay awake in bed that night, and the next night, thinking it through and wish he could stop, but he couldn't. And the truth was, Loki didn't have to come back to Midgard. He could have found himself another life out there, found some planet to make himself king of, but he kept coming back there and sleeping in Skurge's not very luxurious bed, and fucking him bent over the kitchen table or kneeling on his mattress. Maybe that meant something. Maybe that meant he was convenient, except come back to Midgard where he couldn't use his magic just to have sex with some nobody pub bouncer seemed like the opposite of convenient. Maybe that meant he liked him, but what evidence did he have of that? Except he'd brought him two winged horses and that couldn't've been easy. And he kept coming back, so maybe tricking him back in Hel had just been what he had to do, not something he wanted to. And he could've found someone else who hadn't wanted to leave, so maybe that meant he wanted him with him. Maybe he'd just thought all it was to Skurge was loyalty or duty or something else it wasn't.

It got stuck in his head. He hated it, because he had no idea what to do with it, and he couldn't stop thinking about it. Maybe Loki actually liked him. Thor knew him, after all, and Thor had basically said that. Maybe Loki _liked_ him. And six days later, last night, when Loki arrived, Skurge made a choice he can't take back. 

Late at night, his night off, Loki let himself in. Skurge locks the door but Loki knows where he keeps the spare key, and Skurge watched him down the hall between the kitchen table and the front door as he stamped the snow off his boots on the doormat. Maybe Loki liked him, he thought, because there was no reason for him to be there if he didn't. Maybe Loki wanted him, he thought, because there'd been no reason to fuck him if he didn't. So, before Loki could even take his boots off, Skurge marched straight to the front door. He pushed him up against it, he tangled both hands in his hair, and he kissed him on the mouth. 

He half expected him to push him back, but he didn't. When he pulled back, Loki was frowning at him, but the look on his face said he was more surprised than angry, more turned on than angry, and Skurge took that as a good sign. He kissed him again, harder, dropped his mouth to the side of Loki's neck, grazed with his teeth, kissed his jaw, his neck, the hollow at the base of his throat. He shoved his hands under Loki's shirt, found skin, raked with his nails and made Loki hiss and when he went down to his knees on the doormat that was damp with snow, Loki let him. He looked up at him from the floor as he tugged Loki's trousers down over his hips and wrapped one hand around his cock. He looked up at him as he stuck out his tongue and rested the tip of Loki's cock against it. Then he sucked him, Loki's fingers in his hair, Skurge's hands pressing him hard up to the door, until he made him come just like that. 

Skurge was hard when he was finished, straining at the zip in the front of his jeans, and Loki was flushed and apparently speechless for once in his life. When Skurge picked himself up and said, "Upstairs," Loki only paused for a second to pull up his trousers before he followed the instruction. And when they got there, to the little bedroom that was majority filled with bed, and Skurge said, "Take your clothes off," Loki actually did. Maybe it was just to find out what he was planning, but Skurge really wanted to think it was more than that. 

Loki didn't seem to mind when Skurge pushed him down onto the bed. He didn't seem to mind when Skurge knelt between his thighs then leaned down over him, and kissed him, gave his bottom lip a suck and _kissed_ him. Loki got his legs around Skurge's waist and his hands pressed flat against his back and fuck, Skurge hadn't expected that, the way Skurge's palms moved down and squeezed his arse, the way Loki was starting to get hard again against him. 

He pulled back. _Fuck it_, he decided, and he got the lube out from the drawer by the bed, and Loki watched him coat his fingers, almost trembling with nerves or something like that. Loki let him ease one of his legs up against his shoulder to expose his hole. Loki let him rub between his cheeks with his slick fingers, finding his hole, circling his rim. He let him push one finger into him, past the tight muscle, knuckle-deep. 

Skurge had wanted this for so long, wanted _him_ for so long, that he could barely wait to get inside him, and Loki did nothing to make him slow down. Loki watched him slick his cock then he lay back and let Skurge lean back down over him. Skurge pressed his tip against Loki's hole and pushed there, propped up on one hand, one hand at his cock to keep him in place, and he glanced down there to where he started pushing into him, then back up at his face. Loki looked confused that he was letting him do this, but his cock was hard again. And when Skurge pushed in, feeling him relax just far enough to take him, both of them groaned out loud. 

He fucked him hard. Skurge got one hand to the headboard and braced his toes against the bed and he fucked him, one of Loki's calves pressed to Skurge's shoulder and his other leg around his waist. His face was flushed and his hair was everywhere, out of place, his hands gripping tight at Skurge's shoulders, and he bared his teeth as he started to push down and meet his thrusts. Skurge clenched his jaw and almost winced but he kept going, and kept going, Loki hot and tight and slick around him, his cock dragging against his abs. When he kissed him again, pausing so he could ease down low enough, Loki got his fingers into Skurge's hair again and kissed him like he was fucking starving for it, or maybe just angry with him, or himself for letting him do it. 

Skurge came inside him, pushed in balls-deep and gasping. Loki came against Skurge's belly, pulling tight around Skurge's cock that was still pushed in deep. And as he caught his breath, Skurge's head started running through all the things he would've liked to do: kiss him again, touch him, lick him, press him down and kiss him _again_, but he didn't. He went back up on his knees and pulled out of him, because the look on Loki's face said for once he had no idea what this was about. The look on Loki's face said they'd just gone off script and he had no idea what was next. 

"Was there some kind of reason for that?" Loki asked, still faintly breathless. "Do you feel better now?"

Skurge scowled. He rubbed his face. He had no idea what to say, so he just left the bed and disappeared into the bathroom.

He took a long shower, wondering what the fuck he'd just done that for because showing him he wanted him and this wasn't some kind of duty thing had apparently got lost in translation - maybe Loki was shitty at relationships, but it turned out Skurge was, too. Loki's back was turned when he got out, so he just went downstairs and left him there. 

Loki is going to leave Midgard. The things Skurge persuaded himself were true but aren't will be the reason why.

\---

"You know, I'm not her." 

"I know. You just could be." 

"But I'm not." 

Loki looks at him. He does look a lot like Hela, Skurge thinks. And sometimes he _acts_ a lot like Hela. He's not nice. He's not polite. A lot of the time he's not even civil. He's belligerent and a pain in the arse and he doesn't know why he likes him, but he does. Maybe because for all he looks like Hela and acts like Hela, he's _not_ Hela. 

"So, were you in love with her?" Loki asks, like he's trying to sound uninterested but Skurge has known him long enough by now to know that's bullshit of the highest order. 

"No," Skurge replies. "Fuck, no. I was scared of her. She made me hate myself." 

"And I remind you of her?" Loki frowns at him. He leans forward on the table. "Do I make you hate yourself, Skurge?"

"Let's say you don't do a lot for my ego." He smiles wryly. "You know, your brother thinks I'm the reason you keep coming back here. I guess we can tell him he was wrong about that." 

"Why would we do that?"

"Because--"

"_Oh_." Loki actually looks surprised. He sits back suddenly. He laughs, then claps one hand over his mouth and just looks at him, sort of incredulous. He runs both his hands into his hair and rocks a bit on the chair. "Oh, I see." 

"You see what?"

Loki pauses. Loki breathes in and out, watching him over the table, still wearing one of Skurge's sweaters that's a bit too big but still looks good on him somehow. He doesn't leave the house like that, ever, and Skurge is thinking about that when Loki stands up and walks around the table, rests one hand on the back of Skurge's chair like he's making a decision, and then sits down on top of him, straddling his lap. The combined weight of the two of them, neither of them particularly small or light, makes the wood creak. Skurge is so focused on that that when Loki's fingers brush the back of his neck, it makes him jump and look up at him. 

"Are you going to make me talk about this?" Loki asks. 

"Talk about what?" Skurge replies. 

"You are, aren't you." Loki sighs dramatically. He shifts, resting his hands arms over Skurge's shoulders as the chair creaks ominously. He looks up at the ceiling that it felt like Skurge spent a fortnight painting, but that was three years ago now. Maybe he should repaint. Or maybe he should just move on. He's thought about leaving New Asgard, but he's not sure where he'd go because Texas was too hot and there's too many people in New York, and he's fairly sure the Wakandans wouldn't want him. One of the Norwegians in town told him his accent sounds British so maybe London or Manchester or something like that, because it's not like they're not allowed to leave - the others just choose not to, but he thinks some of them might prefer it if he did. Or maybe he's just paranoid about that, who knows. 

"Last time I was here, you asked me where I go," Loki says. 

"I did?"

"You did." 

Loki looks at him awkwardly. There's been times over the years when he's done that, Skurge thinks, when the elegant royal facade breaks a bit at the edge, and Skurge thinks maybe those times Loki feels like just as much of a misfit or an outcast or whatever as Skurge does himself. He's the son of two dead kings, after all, and a Jotunn raised in Asgard, and he's got an inferiority complex about as wide as the roots of Yggdrasil, anyone can see that. Skurge is the ex-Einherjar son of a stonemason who was brought up on Vanaheim, he's got more holes in his Asgardian education than there are stars in the sky, and he helped Hela try to take over Asgard to save his own skin. They cheated death together. In another life, they might have had something. 

"You asked where I go," Loki says. He clenches his jaw. He takes a breath. "You should come with me and find out."

He'd really like to believe that's a real offer, but he doesn't. He thinks back to Valhalla and the two of them escaping death together and all the things they could do if only Loki really meant it, but he doesn't. In a lot of ways, Loki's exactly like his sister was, but in a lot of ways, he's nothing like her at all. 

He doesn't believe him, but he wants to. What he says is, "I'm ready when you are." 

Loki smiles, wide and sharp and pleased. He kisses him, then he stands. "We'll need the horses," he says. "And you should bring that apple." 

Suddenly, Skurge actually believes.

He's made a life on Midgard, he thinks. It's not a bad life, either, as far as lives go, but it's just not like anything he ever wanted. Loki's house, though, full of bits of their old home, says they'll be back again, from time to time.

"Are you coming?" Loki says, and Skurge stands up. 

Maybe it's just another manipulation - he knows Loki's more than capable of that - or maybe Thor was right after all, and this is where it all begins. Maybe they'll earn their way back to Valhalla and find their names still on the table, or maybe they'll go back to his parents' house in Hel. 

Either way, he thinks they'll live first. And he's never been more ready for anything.


End file.
